Collis earns praise as Trinity reflect on loss

They lost 23-10 at home to their West Yorkshire rivals on Thursday night so still await their first win of the Super League season.

Fox offered no excuses for the below-par performance as mistake-ridden Wakefield struggled to make a mark.

The highlight for Richard Agar’s side was Fox’s well-taken try in the first period which was manufactured brilliantly by Collis, the skilful 28-year-old former Cronulla centre.

“I like Dean,” admitted Fox. “I’m not bagging any of my other centres but he’s the best I’ve ever played outside.

“I got 17 tries last year – many created by him – and that was hopefully one of many for this year.

“He’s showed great footwork and then that pass, drawing the winger in and flicking it to me.

“He’s a bit like (Matt) Gidley. I really enjoy playing with Dean and my goal, personally, is to play as well as I can, have a really big season and, hopefully, get a new contract.

“That’s what I’m after.”

Fox, 30, is in his third season at Belle Vue after re-joining for a second spell following a prolific four-year stint at Hull KR.

He admits Wakefield have work to do, though, after losing at Salford and now against Bradford.

“It was a very poor game, poor on both sides, and no team went out of their way to try and win it throughout the whole 80 minutes,” said the ex-England international, Wakefield’s task no easier given they head to champions Wigan Warriors a week tomorrow.

“Our errors cost us. We helped Bradford win it.

“It was only four days after that Salford game but it was the same for Bradford and there’s no excuses.

“It was a poor performance. I thought we played better last week against Salford but obviously we lost there too. That wasn’t good enough.

“It is hard with two of our key players (Jarrod Sammut and Pita Godinet) just coming into the side in the space of a week.

“That’ll take a bit of adjusting but we’ve got to keep strong as a unit, keep together and keep solid, improve in training and then kick on for the next game at Wigan.”

Agar reiterated Fox’s sentiments and said: “You can’t expect to win a game making the amount of errors we did. I’m the losing coach so it’d be soft to hide behind the closeness in games as an excuse,” he said.

“But we both (Agar and Bradford coach Francis Cummins) spoke about it before the game.

“We’ve both had limited preparation and limited recovery time, which showed.”