Hull FC coach John Cartwright believes Wigan Warriors are still the benchmark in Super League after the Black and Whites’ defeat to the reigning champions.
The Warriors regained second spot in the Super League table thanks to a 36-12 win over Hull FC at the MKM Stadium on Sunday afternoon, with Matt Peet’s side proving to be too strong for Cartwright’s outfit, who have made a much-improved start to the season compared to last, winning five from nine.
“I still think they’re the benchmark – they’re the side that you really hate to play,” Cartwright said in his post-match press conference.
They make you nervous because they’re so dangerous. You saw it today, we switched off and made some errors, and they’re really hard to defend. You’ve got to pay them credit. They’re a very well-drilled and well-coached team, and that’s where we want to get to.
They got the game that really suits them. There were a lot of errors from us, and that makes you miss tackles. When you’re missing tackles, that’s when they really make you pay. I thought we did a fair job on (Jai) Field, but we missed him too often because our line was staggered, but (Bevan) French and (Harry) Smith are big guns.
They were very good with their line speed, and the wrestle on the ground, they were better at that than us, and that’s a big foundation for everything you do. They’ve been together a while, and I watch them every week, and they do that very well. They smother you, it makes it hard to get out of your end, and they don’t make errors, that’s why they’re a very good team.”
Wigan were 22-12 ahead at the half-time interval before scoring three unanswered tries in the second half to take the two points back over the Pennines, with Cartwright admitting his Hull side were the engineers of their own downfall.
“It was really disappointing, to be honest,” Cartwright said. “There were patches of the game where we were pretty good, but we also made too many fundamental errors.
“You might get thrown over the sideline once, but four times we ended up getting thrown over, that’s just unacceptable. They should have kicked out on the full, but for whatever reason, we didn’t have our foot on the sideline; they got the scrum and scored when it should have been a penalty on the halfway line. That’s in our hands, so I’m really disappointed with the result and some of the things that happened on the back of our fundamental errors.
“But I still felt at 26-12 that we were still in the game – we had a lot of ball on their try line, and they stopped us. They really slowed the ruck down and made it hard to attack. We came up with some errors, and then they intercepted and scored again.”
