Warrington Wolves 39 Wigan Warriors 12: Morley returns to help Warrington triumph then heads for surgery

Warrington coach Tony Smith paid tribute to his inspirational captain Adrian Morley after he ended a 10-week lay-off to lead the Wolves to an emphatic 39-12 win over Wigan that enabled them to take over at the top of Super League.

The veteran England prop will undergo eye surgery today after finally getting to the bottom of a mystery problem that was causing him double vision, but was told playing today would not cause any further damage.

Morley will miss Friday’s final league game at Hull, which Warrington need to win to lift the League Leaders’ Shield, but did as much as anybody to ensure the Wolves took over pole position.

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“The rest wasn’t working for Moz and he saw a consultant and a surgeon midway through the week with fantastic news,” said Smith.

“They put their finger on exactly what it was. He’ll have a fairly minor operation tomorrow on a little muscle that controls the mechanisms in his eye and it’s a relatively small recovery period.

“We’re so grateful to the doctors. They said he can’t do any more damage to it and was welcome to play and I wasn’t going to stand in his way.

“He looked like he hadn’t missed a game. He was fantastic. I wasn’t surprised but to come back and play as well as he did was a great achievement.”

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Morley, who had not played since sustaining a head injury against St Helens in June, typically took the first drive of the match, and with fellow front rower Garreth Carvell helped lay a superb platform for the Wolves’ early dominance.

They never looked back after racing into a 24-0 lead courtesy of tries from Matt King, Lee Briers and two from Michael Monaghan, while Chris Bridge went on to kick seven goals and extend his sequence of successes to 21 in three matches as Warrington brought the Challenge Cup winners down to earth with a bump.

Wigan went into the game with one eye on the second leg of a famous treble but were flat from the start and have potential disciplinary worries hanging over Gareth Hock and Sam Tomkins.

Hock was placed on report for punching Warrington forward Ben Harrison while Tomkins is charged with an alleged kick on Wolves hooker Jon Clarke.