Smith left frustrated by opening game of new season (From This Is Cheshire)

Tony Smith left frustrated by Warrington Wolves' opening game of new season

6:01pm Sunday 5th February 2012 in Sport By Mike Parsons

Tony Smith

THE performance of his Warrington Wolves team and the officials left Tony Smith a frustrated head of coaching and rugby after the season-opening 20-20 draw with Hull FC at the KC Stadium.

Asked if he was happy with a point, he said: "No.

"We were in a position to win it.

"We played pretty average, particularly in the second half.

"There's some really disappointing things about the game. We shouldn't have been behind."

He seemed mostly concerned by some of Wolves' loss of possession, the awarding of England winger Tom Briscoe's 42nd minute try that left Hull just two points behind at the start of the second half and the overall performance of referee Steve Ganson.

"I don't like knock-ons from kick offs and touch judges calling 'no try' but they get awarded.

"We've just come back from Australia where they have video referees at every game.

"We have two games per weekend and although I can't stand them at least they've got them to adjudicate. We're all over the place.

"We've either got to do something about it or just embrace it.

"We've had the same referee for four consecutive games in this country - I was going to give him a squad number.

"But each game has been refereed differently.

"We're now into wrestle-athons again, where it's slow play-the-balls and everything's about getting them on their backs.

"It's just turning it into a different game at the moment and I'll have to make some thoughts about how we're going to cope with that.

"Other than that, there were some signs from my team that we're going to be all right.

"We were a bit sloppy in some of our areas of defence and we'll have to address that.

"We will execute better in games but I also thought we played some pretty good stuff and so did Hull."