Wakefield coach Daryl Powell labelled the reasoning behind only giving George Delaney a yellow card for his controversial tackle on Friday a ‘joke’: but admitted it had no outcome on the result after his side were well-beaten by St Helens.
The Saints were 20-0 in front in the final ten minutes of the first half at the DIY Kitchens Stadium when Delaney caught Lachlan Walmsley high.
Match official Liam Moore admitted Delaney left his feet when making the challenge but said that there was ‘low-level force’ and mitigation which brought the incident down from a red card to a yellow.
That left many surprised by that decision – and when it was put to Powell the reasoning behind it being a sin-bin, the Wakefield coach said: “Interesting. It’s a red but the game is the game, we got beat at everything tonight.
“It’s a bit of a joke if that’s what they’re saying. Get on the end of one of them and see how low level it is.”
However, Powell was quick to admit there was no complaints about the result, with the Saints stronger in every aspect and Powell left to wonder if his side’s momentum had been stunted by the week off for the split round last weekend.
He said: “I’m not taking anything away from St Helens, they were way too good for us. We’re still in a big battle and we can’t let that derail us.
“You could see a lot of rustiness from us tonight; handling errors, lack of co-ordination.. we’ve trained okay but when you’ve got Saints coming at you like they do.. they fully deserved it. It should have been a sending off but they were ahead of us by a distance tonight.
“Maybe the week off hasn’t done us much good tonight they had way too much intent for us. It was really disappointing from our perspective and we need to improve from that.”