TONY Smith was happy that his players gave their all as Warrington Wolves defeated Widnes Vikings to march into the semi finals of the Challenge Cup for a fifth consecutive year.

He accepted it was not a classic performance from The Wire but felt his players overcame some setbacks to grind out a win against their arch-rivals.

“It was a pretty good game, having a bit of everything,” said Wolves' head of rugby and coaching.

“We were not quite at our best but I’ve got to put a lot of that down to Widnes. I thought they tried really hard and it was a good graft. It kept people on the edge of their seats, probably none more so than me.

“It was one of those where a bounce of the ball or a call here or there could have turned the whole game on its head. For the spectators that’s brilliant, but when you’re a coach you want a bit more space between the two teams.”

He added: “My boys tried their hearts out. It wasn’t an error-free game, or a pretty game, it was a grafting game, a war of attrition. Effort from both teams was enormous and both coaches should be proud.

“There are areas that we need to improve again. I thought some of our kick chase at the end of the game was pretty average and kept them some hope when we should have been silkier and smoother than that. There’s issues there that we need to sort out before our next game of Super League over at Hull KR.

“But it’s good that you’ve got the desire to win even when you’re not right at your best.”

Wolves had to shuffle their troops after losing centre Ryan Atkins to concussion early in the first half and had a Ben Currie second-half score ruled out – harshly in Smith’s view.

“The Ben Currie ‘no try’ was a big call. They say they saw a knock on, but I don’t know if anyone else saw a knock on from the video screens. We can’t find a knock on but they did. It could have made it a little bit easier for us but that’s the way it goes with some of those video refs calls. They can be a toss of a coin, go with you some days and against you on others. We’ve got to kop that.

“Ryan’s concussed but I haven’t had a further update on him. I spoke to him at half time and he was pretty coherent. That was a loss for us at that stage. He’s been playing really well. But I thought Ben Currie made a great adjustment to go to centre and he did some really special things there.”

In the end it came down to Gidley’s boot securing the success, as it did a week earlier when Wolves defeated Catalans Dragons in similar manner by the same scoreline in Super League.

Smith said: “Yeah, we’re having to take few penalty goals at the moment because we’re not quite silky smooth with some of our attack. So we’re probably taking a few more penalties than what we normally would.

“Conditions are a little bit to do with that. It’s not easy out there at the moment with a slippery ball. We thought points on the board would be the right way to go at that stage, but it was a little bit scrappy in the first half.

“One of the tries we gave away was poor handling from us and they took full advantage. They’ve got players capable of doing that.”