Wildcats boss Agar finds room for encouragement despite Huddersfield Giants defeat

Agar saw his side fall to their fourth defeat on the spin on Sunday when Huddersfield Giants left the Rapid Solicitors Stadium with a 32-14 victory.

And although disappointed with the scoreline, and a couple of “soft” tries his men allowed the new Super League leaders, the Wildcats boss was able to take encouragement from big parts of his side’s play.

“I’m really encouraged by lots of aspects of our performance,” he said.

“I’m disappointed today because I felt we let a couple of softies in today that were really avoidable and when Huddersfield had to defend their try line they probably defended it for longer periods better than we did.”

He continued: “If we get frustrated and start looking to change things then I think it creates some doubt in the players. For us it’s remaining strong and really believing in what we’re doing. We’ve played some really tough teams.

“I think it [Wakefield’s point-scoring difference] indicates that we’ve been in games up to our necks for long, long periods. But it’s about stringing those ruthless 80 minute performances together, which we haven’t quite done at the moment. I do feel that we’re learning about each other all the time and I really don’t think we’re that far away in terms of that.

“Of course it would have been nice to get an extra win or two on the board, but we feel if we keep doing what we’re doing and just improving a couple of little areas, I think our performances have shown that we’ll get some wins.”

Nathan Brown’s men were always ahead in the contest but a rallying performance by the hosts at the start of the second half, helped by Ben Cockayne completing his hat-trick, brought them to within four points of their visitors.

They couldn’t complete the fight back, however, and Agar put it down to his side conceding poor penalties and allowing the Giants in for some “soft” tries in the final 15 minutes.

“We felt we pushed them,” commented Agar.

“One thing about Huddersfield, I don’t think they give you an awful lot. But I felt today perhaps they might have been guilty of giving us an opportunity and a chance and I thought for a period in the second half we got on some momentum, we looked as if we could take it, but we would be guilty of doing what Huddersfield did, I guess, in the same way.”

He added: “I think when we look at the tape we’ll see some careless high tackles in there from our boys that didn’t need to be given. We’ll see a couple of errors and in particular it’s the way we finished the game over the last ten or 15 minutes. “We might have been two scores behind on the scoreboard but I didn’t like the loose nature in which we finished the game. Even if the scoreboard is a little bit beyond us at that stage I want us to finish strong and we’ll learn our lesson from that.”

See this week’s Wakefield Express Sport for more reaction to Wakefield’s defeat against Huddersfield.