Agar pleased with 'strong' Wakefield Wildcats performance

Wakefield ended a run of five straight defeats with a 32-22 win against the French club at a sunny Rapid Solicitors Stadium on Sunday - their first home success of the season.

Wildcats were cruising 24-6 at the interval but allowed Trent Robinson's side back into the contest in the second half. Agar put that down to a couple of errors from his side and the need to learn how to close games out.

"I thought for the best part it was a really strong performance," said the Wildcats head coach.

"It's fair to say we never felt comfortable and never got comfortable. Taking into account the opposition, we've seen them do it already this year [coming from behind to beat St Helens] and they're a really dangerous side from all over the park.

"We've got some concerns, we had to use a couple of substitutions, we had some real concerns about how we were travelling energy-wise and using the subs up. We didn't quite have that ability to get Woody [Kyle Wood] into the game as early as we would have liked.

"We're still learning how to win, we've thrown a couple of own goals in there that made the score a little bit closer but it'll do us really good to get over the line. I thought we played some decent stuff and scored some good tries."

Wildcats went into the game on the back of five straight Super League defeats. But Agar held his belief that his side weren't far away from securing a first win since the opening day success at Widnes Vikings. It was a belief that was reaffirmed in the slender loss at Warrington Wolves last weekend and a belief that finally came to fruition against the Dragons.

He said: "Not winning can make you anxious, but that's one thing, we've certainly not been anxious.

"We've been absolutely looking forward to next week every time. I've sounded like a broken record but we feel our performances have been getting better and a win was definitely in sight. When you look at our opposition over the last three or four weeks we've been in every game, competed and had one or two things gone for us.

"I thought today did highlight we're still learning how to win a game and I'd like to think in a number of weeks time we could have closed the game off and won a little more handsomely, but nonetheless we're really happy with the performance of the guys."

Agar was also pleased with Ben Cockayne's response from making two errors that helped the visitors back into the contest. A loose pass from the winger, who scored his seventh try of the season at the other end, allowed Scott Dureau in for a try before his failure to kick the ball into touch led to Vincent Duport touching down.

He said: "Ben has been in great form and he's a little bit down on himself in there because a couple of the errors have come from him, but it's important that he didn't drop his bundle and stayed strong for us through the course of the match."

See Friday's Wakefield Express for all the latest Wildcats news.