Saturday 4 June 2016 10:56, UK
St Helens coach Keiron Cunningham pledged to turn around his club's fortunes after fans turned on him and his team following their 26-4 home defeat by Warrington.
Cunningham, who is in his second season as head coach, was booed by a section of supporters after a third successive defeat left them six points adrift of the top four.
"It's disappointing but the fans pay their money and they are entitled to their opinion," Cunningham said. "They are just desperate for the team to do well.
"They've got to vent their frustrations somewhere but I don't take it personally, even though they are shouting about me.
"I understand where they are coming from. I am fighting as hard as they want us to fight and we will get there."
Saints trailed from the moment second rower Ben Currie went over for the first of Warrington's five tries after only five minutes and, despite having plenty of possession, they lacked the creativity in the absence of injured playmaker Luke Walsh to make it count.
"It was a tough night," Cunningham added. "It's a results-based industry and, when you don't pick a few results up, it seems like the world is against you.
"I thought effort-wise, we had that in abundance.
"The difference in the two sides was that we just weren't quite clinical enough with the ball. Warrington had five or six chances and they took them.
"We had a lion's share of possession in the first half and lot of opportunities but came away with nothing.
"That causes anxiety and that leads to unforced errors and it comes down to the energy battle again.
"The result could easily have gone our way had we executed better. Defensively we didn't get the rewards.
"We lost 'Walshy' and we had 'Wilko' (Jon Wilkin) in the halves and it's something that's probably going to take time to get going again.
"We've got a group of players who are hungry and determined to work hard for each other which we didn't have a few week ago.
"I'm not happy with the result but there's a few more games to go this year and all we can do if fight as hard as we can."
Centre Ryan Atkins scored a try on the 300th appearance of his career to keep the Wolves on top, and Chris Sandow, Stefan Ratchford and Rhys Evans also touched down as they led 26-0 after 48 minutes.
The only score in the last half-hour was a consolation effort by St Helens full-back Jonny Lomax but that could not temper the delight of Warrington coach Tony Smith, who revealed that Kurt Gidley, Chris Hill, Daryl Clark and Ryan
Bailey all defied injury to play in the game.
"I've got to say I was a little worried going into the game," Smith said. "It was certainly our gutsiest win this year. We didn't train together as a team this week and I wasn't sure some of the boys were going to get through the
warm-up.
"Some probably shouldn't have played and wouldn't have played if we had had other options. They should be proud of their efforts.
"I thought we were very good defensively and we had to be. We couldn't seem to get out of our own area in the first half and, when we did, we scored a couple of tries.
"It was fortunate that we got out to a good scoreline and we could get a couple of the players off."
