DEBUTANT Jack Johnson won the praise of Warrington Wolves boss Tony Smith after his first Super League appearance in primrose and blue.

The 19-year-old Academy graduate played 80 minutes at full back having impressed in Lee Briers’ under 19s side this season.

And Smith has challenged the teenager to carry on improving.

“Somebody said his performance was solid, but I thought it was way above solid,” said Smith.

“He had some real big plays in the game, real big moments and he added some spark for us.

“He’s been in terrific form in the 19s throughout this year and he’s earned his chance their over the last few weeks.

“He’s got better and better and better. He’s really stepped it up to the point we thought it was time to give him a shot. It’s a performance nobody can ever take away from him.

“To play exceptionally well on your first game and the challenge for that kid, for young Jack, is to maintain those levels and kick on from them.

“I’ve got no doubt he’ll be trying to do that and striving to do that. He’s a great kid, I’m delighted for him.”

Johnson’s arrival at full back saw Stefan Ratchford move alongside Chris Sandow in the halves.

“It gave us a chance to try some new half backs,” added Smith. “There’s some danger in that – it could have gone the other way as well.

“We went with the combination of Sandow and Ratchford. It gave us a chance to put Ratch up there in front and have a look at how he goes in that combination, one we haven’t had together before.

“It went well. Jack enabled us to try that but there were some good performances.

“Ryan Atkins probably played his strongest game for the year, I thought he was good this week and Ben Currie’s been carrying some injuries but was back to his best.

“(Chris) Hilly was terrific, Clarky was terrific as well playing hooker and loose forward.”

Johnson was one of a number of home-grown youngsters in Wolves’ match-day squad.

“For big periods of the game we had George King – who started the game and I thought he was terrific – (Joe) Philbin, Sam Wilde, (Brad) Dwyer had a really strong coming off the bench for us again, and Jack Johnson,” explained Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby.

“A good heart of kids coming through and the senior players really stood up around those kids and gave them a chance to perform well.”

He was also pleased with Warrington’s response to a ‘nilling’ at the hands of Wigan Warriors a fortnight ago.

“You want to get a response to the performance we put out last time and we got that,” said Smith.

“Not only was it a response to the last performance, but it was a response to the way we’ve trained for the last two weeks.

“It could easily have been slack in training, but they’ve been fantastic and the way they’ve approached it has been absolutely brilliant.

“We got rewards for the hard work. We’ve got some people who are staying on and some who are moving on.

“They all ripped in regardless. It’s important for us to finish the season strong.”

And Smith insists, despite Wolves not having a Grand Final place to play for, every games in their run in is important.

“It matters, regardless of whether you can make the finals or not, there is pride in your jersey, there’s pride in your club, there’s pride in your town and we saw a lot of that,” he said.

“I was delighted with the way they went about it. Great entertainment. When on winger is scoring three tries, one scoring two tries and your centre scoring two tries I think shows the type of rugby we play.

“That’s attributed to a lot of hard work and some good performance across the board.”