Nervous Trinity feeling twitchy after derby defeat admits playmaker Wood

PRESSURE IS mounting on Wakefield Trinity as they battle to secure a place in Betfred Super League's top-eight.
Kyle Wood. PIC: Bruce RollinsonKyle Wood. PIC: Bruce Rollinson
Kyle Wood. PIC: Bruce Rollinson

Trinity’s 24-4 defeat at neighbours Castleford Tigers last weekend was their seventh in eight league matches – after they had won their opening four.

They remain on course for a third successive appearance in the Super-8s, but Widnes Vikings and Hull KR are breathing down their necks.

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Friday’s derby defeat came two weeks after a four-point win over leaders St Helens and followed a disastrous 38-4 drubbing at Salford Red Devils.

Kyle WoodKyle Wood
Kyle Wood

They face a crunch game at home to Hull KR on Sunday and hooker Kyle Wood admitted Trinity’s losing sequence is making the side “a little bit nervous now”.

He said: “We want that win.

“Hopefully it will start coming and we’ll get on a roll.

“We have shown that when we are on and we are playing well we can beat the top teams, but we need to find that form and find some consistency and get back-to-back wins.”

Kyle WoodKyle Wood
Kyle Wood

Wood felt the “effort was a lot better” against Tigers than it had been at AJ Bell Stadium, but admitted Trinity’s error count was too high.

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That meant they struggled to apply pressure and all their tackling early on left them drained late in the match, when Tigers pulled away.

“We didn’t help ourselves with our completion rate, especially in the first half,” Wood stated.

“We did a lot of defending on our line, that took a lot of energy out of us and I think it caught up with us at the back end of the game.”

The outcome might have been different had Max Jowitt scored a try early in the second period. If converted, that would have levelled the scores, but video referee Phil Bentham overruled match official Robert Hicks and awarded Tigers a penalty for an obstruction.

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Wood said: “To me, it looked a try. That could have evened things up and the game could have flipped the other way.

“But to be honest, we weren’t there. Our effort was there, but we were just off with the ball. We weren’t as fluent as we normally are with the ball and we made too many errors.”