Willie Poching heartened by Wakefield Trinity’s display in Challenge Cup loss to Wigan Warriors

Wakefield dominated much of the first half, only to trail 12-6 at the break and a try within a minute of the resumption left them with too much to do.

But Poching insisted there were “plenty of positives” from the performance, particularly in the opening 40 minutes. Trinity were without winger Tom Johnstone and stand-off Jacob Miller because of injury, but Poching insisted: “The spirit’s still there, the fight was still there.

“We had some really good performers, I thought James Batchelor took his opportunity and Tinirau Arona stood up as a senior figure.

“Corey Hall keeps growing and I thought the young fella on the wing, Lewis Murphy, has gone up another level. That’s what we asked of him.

“There’s a couple of things to look at, but he is on the right trajectory in terms of growing and improving every time he plays.”

Yesterday’s defeat ended a four game winning run and they have to back up against Castleford Tigers in a Super League game on Thursday.

Poching admitted: “It is disappointing to be knocked out at this stage and disappointing we couldn’t quite carry on what we did in the first half.

“We didn’t quite get out for the second half in the way we wanted and some of their quality came through, but I thought the first half was fantastic for us.”

Poching handed full credit to Wigan for keeping his men out under huge pressure in the opening 40.

“They defended well,” reflected the coach.

“We had quite a few raids on their goalline and we got over a couple of times, that were denied.

“It’s disappointing they got out [of their territory] quite easily and scored an opportunistic try, but that’s what good teams do.

“In the end, looking at the scoreline, I don’t think we deserved some of that, but we’ve got to roll our sleeves up and get ourselves ready to go, because we’ve got games coming thick and fast now and we can’t dwell on this too long.”