Hull KR 18 Hull FC 10: ‘Remarkable’ Matt Parcell earns Tony Smith’s praise after derby victory

He got a second win from two home outings having previously beaten former club Warrington Wolves and they have now lifted off the bottom of the table.

“We know we’ve got more games to go and we’re not in the position we want to be,” said Smith. “But we need to play well. If you do that you won’t just pick up two points, you pick up two, then four, then six, then eight.

“We’ve got to find a way to keep performing well.

“If we hadn’t played the way we did, they’d have rumbled us. It was really important we played good rugby league tonight and we did.

“The effort there was great.”

New signing Matt Parcell earned man-of-the-match just 24 hours after arriving from Leeds Rhinos where the Australian hooker had, strangely, been out of favour.

“Matt was remarkable having had just one training session with the rest,” said Smith.

“He grew into the game, did a lot of observation early on but really came alive and hurt Hull. He was terrific.

“He’s my type of player. He said it himself the other day; I’ll back him to do what he does. Sometimes he’ll run and it won’t go right but I’ll be ‘right, OK.’”

It was only Hull’s second defeat in eight games but coach Lee Radford had no complaints.

“It was a well deserved result I felt,” he said. “I say it all the time that in derbies you’ve got to go and out-fight and out-scrap the opposition then ride the momentum when you get it.

“We got out-fought and out-scrapped, made errors and our kicking game was well off.

“In the second half we looked a very tired side.”

Hull loose forward Joe Westerman dislocated his knee late on but pushed it back in and carried on playing.

Radford said: “He does that every fortnight. It has genuinely come out on numerous occasions – he needs some ligaments in there somewhere.

“It’s a gladiator sport and we had no interchanges left so he stayed out there.”