Wakefield Trinity’s two-week break will be vital insists Willie Poching

Trinity suffered a fifth successive defeat when they let a 12-4 half-time lead slip against Huddersfield Giants two days ago.

They are being dragged back into a Betfred Super League relegation battle and face a crucial trip to bottom club Toulouse Olympique in their next match, on Sunday, May 15, before visiting another struggling side, Leeds Rhinos, five days later.

The 14-12 loss to Giants was Trinity’s fifth game in 18 days, but Poching refused to use that as an excuse and insisted there is some hard work to be done over the next fortnight.

“It’s a tough schedule at this time of year, but that game, particularly, was in our hands and we let it go,” he reflected.

“We have got a weekend off next week and some time ahead of us and we need to put in some solid work and get back to the form we know we have in us.

“The schedule of late has meant we’ve been patching up and rolling the team out, but that doesn’t excuse us from the performance we put in [on Thursday].

“The personnel we had out there is better than that and I’ve got to do my job as the coach and the leader of it to get that right.”

Poching was upset at the way his side let Giants back into the game after the break. He added: “We thought we were in a pretty commanding position at half-time, not just through the score, but through the performance and how we were playing.

“We just didn’t quite kick on in the second half, again. We had ourselves in a position to kick on and I’m disappointed we weren’t able to and disappointed in the performance in the second half.

“It just wasn’t good enough. We still had some chances to cross the whitewash and to not do so is one of those disappointing things we’ll have to look at, fix up and work hard on.”

Poching hailed winger Lewis Murphy as a “great positive” from the game.

He said: “I thought his performance indicated he belongs here. He has grown in leaps and bounds.”