Sunday 13 July 2014 00:02, UK
Wigan coach Shaun Wane hailed a 'very professional' performance from his side as they swept aside Catalan Dragons 37-16 in Perpignan.
Matty Bowen ran in two of Wigan's six tries with Tony Clubb, Josh Charnley, Scott Taylor and Joe Burgess also on the scoresheet as the Warriors moved back into the top three of the standings with a convincing victory.
A delighted Wane said: "I'm very happy with our win today. We didn't start well but in the second 20 minutes of the first half we completed (our sets) at 100 per cent and we ended up winning those 20 minutes 18-6. That made my half-time team talk very simple.
"I thought we went about our business really well, and very professionally. The players reacted this week and really looked after themselves and that came out in their performance today."
Referee James Child incurred the wrath of most of the 9,500 crowd when he sent Catalan duo Jason Baitieri and Benjamin Garcia to the sin-bin during a run of five consecutive penalties conceded in a three-minute period at the second half.
However, Wane believes the official had a "fantastic" game, adding: "I thought the game was a good, tough rugby league game, I thought James was fantastic, I thought he had a great game, as he has for us many times.”
"It is always a tough challenge to play Catalans but our middles were really good today as they were at London last week and our wrestle was really good. We continued to make good yards in the middle and that was the most pleasing thing. We're in a good place today."
Catalan had led for a while in the first half but a devastating spell either side of half-time from Wigan when the visitors ran in four tries in the space of nine minutes took the game away from them.
Dragons coach Laurent Frayssinous took some positives from his side's second-half display considering they lost two players to the sin-bin, but overall felt it was a disappointing and frustrating evening.
"Even with 11 men, we still only lost the second half 13-6 which is not bad. I told the boys that they had a dig and worked pretty hard but we lacked some composure and some patience with the ball and defensively our principles let us down, especially at the end of the first half," he said.
"It's pretty frustrating to get the result we did tonight after the performances we have put out on the field over the last few weeks.
"There was an element of ill-discipline from our part given the penalty count against us. We spoke about wanting to be aggressive but there is a line that you can't cross, unfortunately we crossed that tonight."
