TONY Smith expects his Warrington Wolves side to be more ‘potent’ and has called for patience in attack after a loss to St Helens on Thursday night.

Wolves went down 32-24 at Langtree Park, with Daryl Clark, Micky Higham and Chris Hill all crossing in similar fashion from play-the-balls.

Kevin Penny also added to his try-tally with a breakaway score, set up by a Chris Bridge charge down, but the hosts held off a Warrington fight back.

“It ended up with an exciting finish and at 30-12 down we weren’t real excited about it, but our boys didn’t give in, that’s the spirit,” said Smith.

“We’ve seen a number of times over the years where Saints have snatched the game from us and we were hoping to do one back to them.

“It was not quite to be, but I thought Saints deserved the spoils. It would have been nice to pick up a point or snatch a win, but they controlled the ruck way better than us, the speed of the game way better and their goal-line defence was very good.

“They had a couple of real glaring mistakes when each of our dummy half players in Clark and Higham, and dare I say it Hill, each scored a try close to the line.

“Aside from that they were pretty sound on their goal line, we need to get a bit more potent about us attack-wise, offer a little bit more down there and test them.”

But Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby believes his side will learn from the defeat.

“We had a couple of opportunities early, when we made that break and jumped around from dummy half, that was lenient to just get a penalty,” he added.

“We would have liked to have got a bit more from that break and at times it can slow the game down, back-to-back penalties on the try line.

“Saints are willing to defend their try line no matter what. They’re happy to give away penalties and get organised and get back in control.

“They’ve shown that all year, time after time. So you’ve got to be a bit more patient than that. We’ll learn some lessons from that no doubt.

“We’ll have some good tussles with them throughout the year, we’ve got them at Magic as well.”

Despite conceding a 32-point haul, Smith reserved some praise for Wolves’ defence.

“I can’t fault our effort defensively. Some of our first-up contact wasn’t great at times,” added Smith.

“At times we did a good job on some of their big men, but at times we bounced out and gave them some play-the-balls.”