Wakefield Trinity coach Chris Chester refuses to blame motorway delay for Super League defeat at Warrington Wolves

Wakefield arrived at HJ Stadium just 45 minutes before Friday’s scheduled 7.45pm kick-off time and were 14-0 behind after 19 minutes.

Trinity went on to suffer their first defeat in four games and Chester admitted: “I was disappointed with the start.”

He said: “In the first 20 minutes I thought we looked like a team who had just spent three and a bit hours on a bus.

“That’s certainly not being used as an excuse, I thought our ruck control was really poor and some of our contacts through the middle weren’t up to standard.”

Trinity stopped the bus on the motorway, when stuck in traffic, to retrieve equipment from the hold, allowing the players to get strapped en-route to the stadium.

“It’s just one of those things, something you can’t plan for,” he said.

After their poor start, Trinity trailed only 14-6 at the break and Chester said he felt “fairly confident” at that stage.

He added: “I thought we had turned it around and we were getting some ascendancy through the ruck, but we didn’t execute as well as Warrington did.

“At the start of the second half we made one error and didn’t touch the ball for seven or eight sets.

“We looked like the team from six or seven weeks ago, when we came up against Saints and made an error and they put 24 points on us.”

Chester felt 18 points should have been enough to win the game, but stressed: “Defensively we weren’t good enough.

“We really struggled against a really good Warrington team.”

Reece Lyne, who was called into the England squad earlier on Friday, was taken off in the second half, but Chester insisted: “He’s all right, just tightness in his hamstring.

“It wasn’t worth the risk to keep him out there.”