Rovers were well short of their best at Warrington on Saturday afternoon
Mikey Lewis of Hull Kingston Rovers
Hull KR never gave themselves a chance of beating Warrington Wolves on Saturday afternoon, says Willie Peters.
Rovers lost 34-12 at the Halliwell Jones Stadium to fall to their third loss in four games, which could ultimately see them drop out of the play-off picture this evening.
KR conceded six tries, including four in a first half to forget as errors gifted Warrington possession and field position and ensuring the game got away from the East Yorkshire outfit.
Peters’ side did hit back with a couple of tries in the second half through Oliver Gildart and James Batchelor but it wasn’t enough to pose a serious challenge.
“There’s a lot of reasons why it could be off but we don’t want to make excuses, we’ve just got to simplify things,” Peters said after the game.
“The starts the last couple of weeks have been really poor with errors and unforced errors. It’s fatiguing us and then instead of winning field position and putting pressure on the opposition, we’re under the pump and then not defending the errors. At 10-0, we couldn’t have had a worse start and we didn’t look like scoring at the other end because we weren’t winning field position and we couldn’t get out of our half.
“It’s difficult to pinpoint one thing at the moment but we need to simplify things and make sure we start better to give ourselves a chance because we didn’t at all today.
“I thought that first 30 minutes couldn’t have gone any worse and it was our doing. For us, the last two weeks haven’t been performances to be proud of, that’s for sure.”
On how he pulls KR out of the slump, he added: “It’s individuals. How bad do you want it, how bad do you want to improve? The way we played today, that team doesn’t make a semi-final and shouldn’t be in a semi-final.
“What we need to do is go brick by brick, game by game and make sure we get our training right and get that nailed. If we don’t want to invest the same or more into improving then we’ll never improve. Individually look for improvement within and then collectively we’ll start to get a better outcome.”
Rovers went down to 12 men late in the game as Mikey Lewis was sin-binned for an egregiously late tackle, similar to the one Peta Hiku was sin-binned and ultimately suspended for last week against Wakefield Trinity.
However, there were also accusations of a headbutt from Lewis in the first half.
“I need to see it, I didn’t see the replay,” Peters said when asked about Lewis’ actions.
“I need to have a look so I don’t want to comment too much. Mikey is a player who is emotional. In times like this you need to have a level head, you need to make sure that you’re not overstepping the mark. I honestly haven’t seen it.
“I’ll have a look at it but we need to make sure that as a team that we remain level headed. The reason why things snowball and you have what Peta Hiku did last week, things snowball and frustration comes out. Don’t let what happens dictate your mindset.”