22 June 2023 , 19:21
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Fuming Warrington star Daryl Clark intends on taking his Challenge Cup heartache out on former club Castleford.
The England hooker, 30, is still smarting after Sunday’s quarter-final shocker against 12-man Wigan. But joint-leaders Wolves are now out to shoot for Super League with his hometown team first in their sights. Clark, set to join St Helens in 2024, said: “My missus’ family and my family all still live in Cas so the odd weekend we do get back.
“My father-in-law’s a big Cas fan and he’ll be there Friday - but I don’t think he’ll have his Tigers shirt on! Cas are at the other end of the table to us but have a similar sort of thing to us: no consistency.”
Warrington won their opening eight games of the season to emerge as genuine title contenders. But they have lost three of their last four fixtures to fall off the rails, including that miserable defeat against Wigan who had Kaide Ellis sent off after just seven minutes. Clark, who won the 2014 Man of Steel in his final season before swapping Castleford for Wolves, admitted: “We had no excuses for what happened.
“We killed ourselves with all those errors. Playing against 12 men or not, when you’re competing like that, you give yourself no chance. We couldn't finish our sets, couldn’t put them in the corners, they were rolling us in defence and when we got anything in good position we just coughed the ball up. We made eight or nine errors in the first half alone and you won’t win against Wigan doing that even if they’ve got 12 men or not.”
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Warrington's Dary Clark in the Magic Weekend loss against Hull FC (Getty Images)Now Warrington - relentlessly mocked with the "it's always our year" joke - must turn all their attention to aiming for the League Leaders’ Shield and that elusive Grand Final glory having not won the championship since 1955. Clark, who lost the title decider at Old Trafford in 2016 and again two years later, said: “There’s only three things you can win in a year and that’s one of them gone now after that Cup performance so we just have to concentrate on the other two.
“The last few weeks we’ve been a bit up and down. It’s just finding consistency. We started really well but have then been up down, up down with a couple of losses. It’s just finding our best 17 and hopefully keeping people fit, rolling the same players out and just finding that level of consistency. It’s too up and down at the minute. Castleford are doing it tough but you can see on their day they can put a decent performance in. Leeds at Magic was a good performance and a few weeks before that they were unlucky at Catalans.”