It was a tough night for Hull FC. Here is Andy Last’s verdict.
Hull FC back rower Jed Cartwright.
Andy Last labelled Hull FC’s performance against Wakefield Trinity as a game of ‘two halves’ and has criticised his side’s first-half showing as the West Yorkshire side ‘rolled downfield’ in what was a dominant and powerful display.
Wakefield built a strong 24-0 half-time lead before closing the game out at 36-10. They were much the better team, and they took advantage of a sluggish Hull start and some poor discipline, with Herman Ese’ese and Jermeiah Mata’utia both sent to the sin bin during the game.
Giving a firm and honest account post-match, Last also praised the spirit shown in the second half after going down to just one interchange, but ultimately any response was all in vain after Hull gave themselves a mountain to climb.
“It was a game of two halves,” Last said. “The first half, I wasn’t happy with the way that we performed. They rolled us up the field far too easily. The mobility and power of their pack really got them on the front foot and we didn’t do a good enough job in stopping them.
“They took us on in the middle of the field, but we didn’t respond to that challenge very, very well, and that’s disappointing. We certainly lost the physical battle, and then, unfortunately, we lost Herman for ten minutes and they were very, very ruthless in that period and scored two tries, and obviously that took them to 24-0 at half-time.
“We were struggling to control the speed of the ruck when we had 13, so when we lost Herman and then lost Jeremiah for 20 minutes. It made things very, very difficult. The disruption at the start of the game, too, losing Will Kirby, and then Amir Bourouh, and then Jed Cartwright tightened up again at half-time, so we were down to one fit body in that second half. We were rolling people for 10 minutes at a time, we were fatigued, and then we made some errors, trying to overplay a little bit in that second half to try and get back on the scoreboard.”
On what pleased him in the second half, Last continued: “The messaging at half-time was all about getting that physical side of the game right; digging our shoulder in, turning the ball over in good areas, front-loading a little bit of energy in D and stopping them being able to penetrate our defensive line and bend the line back and create separation, which allowed them to offload.
“And I thought we did that in the second half and we showed that we could compete. The second half was far better and much more how we hoped it had been. I thought the scoreboard could have got really, really ugly, but to compete in that second half, like we did, I was very pleased with that.
“We found some energy defensively and caused them some problems and then we found a little bit of energy with the ball and we put fatigue into the opponent. And when we put fatigue into the opponent, it allowed us to move the ball laterally and cause some problems. We got 10 points on the board and then made an error. We gave them the chance to regain momentum due to some costly individual errors.”
And on the sin bins, Last gave mixed reviews. He said: “The Ese’ese one – I don’t really know what he got sin-binned for. I don’t know if it was a push after the incident on Max Jowitt or whether it was the tackle on Tom Johnstone, so I’m not really sure what the actual sin binning was for. Jeremiah, I’ve got no objection to that. He hit Jack Sinfield when the ball had gone, which is a bit silly, really.”
Last also has no issues on the tackle which saw Will Kirby leave the field with a serious-looking knee injury.
“He felt the knee go before the collision,” Last added. “As he’s dropping down, there’s a clear change in height for Will and the guy who was tackling him. He does catch him, but that didn’t cause the injury.”