Simon Grix has reflected on his side’s narrow 24-18 defeat to Warrington on Saturday afternoon.
The Wolves edged a thrilling contest thanks to a last minute winning try from Matt Dufty on the club’s annual Armed Forces Match Day at the MKM Stadium, but Hull came away from the clash with plenty of positives after another promising effort.
Speaking in his post-match press conference, Grix said: “That might have been a good one to watch for the neutral. It was end-to-end at times. I’m proud of the lads. I thought they had a really good dig, and it was important that we backed up last week with another good performance in terms of effort and energy this week. They showed some togetherness again.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed. We felt like we could have gotten something out of the game. I’m proud of them because they had a good performance, but also because of the adversity in and among it. We had Tom Briscoe come off for the head check, and then we lost him for 15 minutes. We lost Cam Scott, Jack Ashworth, and Ligi Sao, so for a time we only had one person to select from on the interchange.
“They went through a bit today. It’s disappointing, and to get beat on the bell, that’s a bit of a suckerpunch, but we showed them signs again that we are heading in the right direction. It’s just really disappointing not to come away with something.”
Grix added: “We didn’t start the game well, which was disappointing. On the whole, you make loads of choices on the field, and when you’re blowing a bit and it’s a contest, you make choices about where you spend your energy. I think they just caught us a couple of times where we thought we’d get away with this and instead got burned. There are a couple of lessons there.
“With the ball, we spent a lot of time on their line in that first half, and we’re disappointed that it didn’t look like we practiced. It was off-the-cuff and frantic. It looked like we were making it up, so there’s another lesson in there: we don’t prepare for the sake of it; we’re preparing for a reason.
“We need to be organised when we’re down there, but we’ve been hit by 50 a number of times this year, and I’d rather feel like this, as much as this one hurts, than like that. There are lots of positives.”
Grix provided an an injury update on Jack Ashworth, Cam Scott and Ligi Sao, all of whom left the field during the match.
“Jack has hurt his ankle. We need to check it, but it was obviously significant enough for him to go down in a heap.
“Cam was his hamstring. We will have to get him scanned.
“Ligi was a combination of things. He’s been putting his body through it for a while now without much of a breather. He just got to where he couldn’t continue.
“We’ve got a week off now to lick our wounds, and hopefully, at least one of them comes out of the other side of it and we can select them, but we’ll see.”
Picking out some of his key individual performers, Grix added: “I thought Moy was good. He probably wished he could have had a couple moments back in the game, but everyone will be thinking that. He came up with some good stuff.
“He’s brave and for a little fella he does throw himself around. I do think there’s a lot more in him yet. I don’t think we’ve seen the end product. In training, I’ve seen him pick the right pass a number of times on the edge.
“I don’t know if it’s a little bit of nerves or if it’s happening a little bit quicker because it’s Super League, but he’s not quite called pulled that pass yet when he’s had the opportunity. Again, it’s an exposure thing and the more he gets, the better he is going to get. He is definitely one to hold on to and put a little bit of hope into.”
On the performance of WIll Gardiner, he continued: “From what I’ve seen, yeah, that was his best yet. I think Will got better the longer he went on. He was great. When you play in the middle, your energy leaves you pretty quickly, particularly when you come off the bench, and it’s having the ability to hang on for that period and for your second wind to come, that often separates the men from the boys.
“That’s something Will is developing but I thought he did that quite well. Circumstances made it where he had to get through it and he did a really good job for us. He carried the ball tough and he kept turning up in defence. The challenge for Will now is to get himself in the shape so he can keep turning up and doing that on a regular basis, but he’s another one with potential.”
Simon Grix is proudly sponsored by Rowe Freight.
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