Nathan Brown: We need to be ruthless to get us back on track

Apr 30 2009 by Chris Roberts, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Have you had any further thoughts on the Warrington defeat?

As I said at the time, they were just too good for us on the day, and we were just a touch off the pace.

Against Warrington and the week before against Leeds, we just surrendered too quickly on defence.

On top of that, our speed of line wasn’t as good as it has been.

And we certainly didn’t get where we were on the ladder earlier in the season on the back of being like that, that’s for sure.

We know what we can achieve when all 17 players work hard for each other.

But at the weekend, it was a case of our really good players being off their game and others also being down.

For us to be successful, we can’t afford that to happen.

You also didn’t help yourselves on attack by giving away so much possession, did you?

Unfortunately, when you’re not playing hard enough in defence, your attack falls away, and that’s what happened to us.

If you’re a St Helens or a Leeds you can often have off-days but still cruise around and, more often than not, probably get the wins.

But, for us, we need to work hard as a group of people. When we do that we’re a solid sort of outfit and that’s been the key for us, and we need to get back to working hard for each other as quickly as possible.

Last weekend, we started the game far too meekly and just couldn’t turn it around, which was always going to be hard against a quality side like Warrington.

They may still be sitting at the wrong end of the table, but that’s not down to talent.

If anyone had seen this game between us, they’d have thought we were the team that had the talent and was just going through the motions.

It’s clear that since they got their new coach he’s moved a couple of players on and that’s made their other good players knuckle down or they could be heading the same way.

Were you a little concerned with a penalty count of 10-4 against you?

No, because you usually find that’s the case when you’re soft and the other side’s on top of you.

You do generally find that the bounce of the ball and penalties do fall into your arms when you’re on song and are the more aggressive side.

You have to earn the right to win those sort of breaks, and that’s what Warrington did because they were so much better than us in a lot of areas.

I would, however, have been concerned if we’d be on the wrong end of a penalty count like that if we’d been as dominant as Warrington were against us.