It was another tough night for Hull FC.
John Cartwright has defended Hull FC back Davy Litten. (Image: SW PIX)
John Cartwright refused to pin all of the blame on Hull FC full-back Davy Litten following Thursday’s 14-10 defeat at Wakefield Trinity but has conceded they will have some discussions around the position moving forward.
Litten was at the heart of a crucial error from a high kick that gifted a try to Wakefield winger Oliver Pratt just before half-time. That try saw the two sides go into the break level after Hull led for the majority of the first half.
However, Cartwright pointed to the error before in yardage that gave Wakefield the opportunity to strike – with such mistakes derailing Hull’s performance and ensuring Trinity edged a tight contest in the second half after a surge of favourable territory.
“We shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place,” Cartwright, speaking post-match, said. “We had the ball with less than a minute to go and we made an error which gave them an opportunity to have three plays and they scored.
“Yes, Davy should have attacked the ball, but we shouldn’t have been in that position. We put ourselves in that position with the error with less than a minute to go.”
As for Litten’s performance, which saw the young back keep Hull in the contest with a try-saving tackle in the second half, Cartwright continued: “It’s a high-pressure position. I’ve put him there; he hasn’t played a lot there so I take full responsibility. But he’s shown so many good signs in and around where he’s come up short.
“We’ll discuss things. It doesn’t matter where you play Davy – he gives it 100 per cent every time and he loves the club and his teammates. He’s the first guy you pick every week but we’ll have a look at that through the week and we’ll make some decisions.”
On the contest itself, Cartwright believes there was some improvement in the Hull performance – in particular from John Asiata, who had a strong first 30 minutes – but ultimately not enough to prevent a third successive Super League defeat.
“Yeah (there was improvement) but we let it get away a little bit in the second half, and at the tail of the first half too,“ Cartwright continued. We made some errors – the error where they scored the try just before half time, if we just tuck it under our arm, they don’t score – so it’s really hurting us and it’s costing us.
“It was the same last week. We were probably a little bit better this week with our ball control. I thought we looked pretty organised in general, but there were still too many errors and some of our end-to-end sets were just not ideal for us.
Outlining where Wakefield won the game, Cartwright added: “I thought we looked okay with the ball but when you don’t build pressure, it’s hard to score points. You need more than just one good set; you’ve got to go set for set for set, which is what they did to us in the second half. We really struggled to get out of our own end.“