Toronto head coach: "I'm seeing some really encouraging signs and I'm remaining positive on this performance"
Saturday 29 February 2020 22:06, UK
Brian McDermott remains confident about Toronto Wolfpack's Super League prospects despite watching them suffer a fifth defeat in as many games.
The Canadian side remain rooted to the foot of the table after going down to a 32-0 defeat by champions St Helens at Warrington's Halliwell Jones Stadium on Saturday evening.
However, head coach McDermott believes there is still plenty of room for optimism.
"I'm seeing some really encouraging signs and I'm remaining positive on this performance," McDermott said. "I think we've been improving gradually for the last four weeks.
"Certainly we got a fair few things wrong with the ball, but I thought Saints were great defensively. That had all the hallmarks of a 60-10 loss if you look at the completion rate and the amount of soft errors we made.
"In that respect I saw a huge amount of commitment in defence and I saw some tough blokes going through tough periods. Parts of that game really encouraged me about where we're at as a group.
"They are the hard things you've got to put into a team, the toughness and the resilience and the ability to stay in the game. While the scoreline doesn't look pretty and the zero doesn't look pretty, there's certainly some thing we can take out of that game and build on."
McDermott gave a debut to forward Jack Wells, who has joined the club on loan from Wigan Warriors, and revealed that centre Chase Stanley has finally arrived in the country after visa delays, although it may take him a couple of weeks to get to play.
"There's a whole host of things that we're doing behind the scenes," McDermott said. "We're working tirelessly to try and bring some people in and change things around from within.
"There's going to come a point in the season when we will have the wind in our sails and how solid we are as a group through this tough period will have a bearing on how long that purple patch lasts and how sustainable it will be.
"I've just surprised the players by saying don't worry too much. There are some things we clearly got wrong tonight but focus on some of the positives."
St Helens showed little sign of a hangover from their World Club Challenge defeat by Sydney Roosters as they ran in five tries without reply to climb up to second place in the table.
"It wasn't easy coming off the back of such a big game last week when we threw so much energy into it and to get over the disappointment of not getting the result," Saints head coach Kristian Woolf said.
"It wasn't quite the same big occasion or the same atmosphere so the group deserve a lot of credit. I thought they did a good job. I was particularly happy with the way we defended both halves.
"They are a team that challenge you and I thought we handled them really well. We stuck to our attack in the first half, we got a bit sloppy in the second half, but our defence made up for it and overall I think we handled the conditions pretty well."
