Warrington Wolves 12-19 Hull FC
Hull FC strengthened their position at the top of First Utility Super League with a scrappy 19-12 win over Warrington Wolves at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.
Gene Ormsby forced his way over in the corner to give the hosts the lead after four minutes, but Fetuli Talanoa finished a slick move as the leaders quickly responded.
Benjamin Jullien charged down a kick on halfway to allow Chris Sandow to run in unchallenged to restore the Wolves advantage.
Mark Minichiello took advantage of a gap in the home side’s defence and Marc Sneyd’s second successful conversion gave Hull a 12-10 half-time lead.
Kurt Gidley squared the scores with a 62nd-minute penalty, but Gareth Ellis’ superb solo try and a late Sneyd drop goal saw Hull record a 13th win in their last 14 games.
Hull coach Lee Radford was delighted to see his side secure the two points, even if there was a lack of quality on show.
“It was a horrible game, a poor advert for the top of the competition, but we’re sat at the top so I’m not going to complain,” Radford said.
“It was bizarre, a really strange and scrappy affair, and we probably won’t see that again for a long time. The players are as baffled as we are.
“If there’s a positive, I thought we defended really well. We had to be physical on both edges and we conceded just two opportunist tries, which is obviously pleasing.”
Warrington would have gone top with a win but drop to third following Wigan Warriors’ last-gasp victory at Hull KR, and coach Tony Smith had no complaints over the result.
“Both teams were trying to give each other a chance of being in that game,” Smith said. “It was poor quality rugby league for a top-of-the-table clash, which was disappointing.
“We were certainly not worthy of going top tonight. They deserve their win, I thought they were slightly better than us in their execution.
“I thought our defence was pretty good, we just didn’t put any pressure on them and we turned the ball over too cheaply.
“We were definitely in better shape training wise than last week but it didn’t happen tonight. I can’t fault their efforts, the players tried hard from both teams but it was stop-start and hard to get any fluency.
“We looked way off it in terms of our skills and we’re going to address that. We’re generally good at going away and rectifying things.”