Warrington star Daryl Clark knows his under-fire side have to “cut out all the sh*t” to avoid fans turning on them again.
The England hooker hopes to help big-spending Wolves avoid a fifth straight defeat when they head to Hull KR tonight. They were jeered off at Halliwell Jones Stadium after Wakefield Trinity dumped them out of the Betfred Challenge Cup on Sunday. Boss Daryl Powell - who joined from Castleford for 2022 - held lengthy clear-the-air talks with his shambolic players in the dressing room afterwards.
He said they needed to “fix their heads”, the abject display was “ridiculous” and he’d been “butting heads” with some of them after changing Wolves’ playing style. Clark, 29, admitted: “Daryl’s pretty open like that.
“We’ve a lot of good players but I can’t say any of us are performing consistently. He’s right on that front. We just need to cut out all the sh*t - errors, penalties and soft defence is killing us. But this is my eighth season at Warrington and 12th playing.
“I have never been booed like that coming off a field by my own fans. It wasn’t a great feeling. There was silence while we were waiting for Powelly. We said we need a big refocus. When you’re in these situations it can go one of two ways. It can get worse or gradually get better.
“We’re hoping we can get our heads together as a playing group and as a staff and that we can go forward rather than the opposite way. It’s a big game on Friday. It’s never easy over at Hull KR so we have our hands full there as well.”
Unlike many of his team-mates, Clark has worked with Powell before. He played under him at Castleford when the coach joined in 2013 and won Man of Steel the following year before joining Wolves in a £185,000 deal. Clark knows what to expect from the 56-year-old who led Castleford to their first-ever League Leaders’ Shield and Grand Final in 2017.
Clark insisted: “He’s proven his style of play works. But the way we play in games it’s hard to play in any sort of way.
“We’re giving penalties away all the time, we’re dropping the ball, we’re missing tackles and stupid stuff so it’s hard to input any sort of gameplan on the back of that. I can understand what he’s saying. He’s come in and tried to change a lot. He’s changed all the calls and all the plays and it’s obviously just not clicking at the moment. It’s hurting us. We just need to get rid of all the cr*p that we’re doing so we have a chance to execute it properly.”
Asked why he thinks Warrington’s star-studded squad have struggled so much after - especially after winning their opening three games - he added: “I’m not too sure. Confidence does play a part. We have talented players who shouldn’t be making the stupid errors we are doing.
“We’re just not controlling games. And obviously I’m part of that as well. We just need to be more consistent. If I knew the answers, I’d be the coach myself. A lot of it is self-inflicted. But we’re looking to put it right on Friday.”
