Sheffield Eagles director commends team despite defeat to Toronto Wolfpack

The scoreline did not reflect the efforts of his side – that was the general consensus from Sheffield Eagles boss Mark Aston following defeat to Toronto.
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Eagles produced a gutsy display against the Championship big spenders. They were in the contest coming up to the last five minutes before the break, but a brace of tries before the interval, followed by another score just after, saw Wolfpack win 40-10.

Aston said: “The effort was there from our lads, and the scoreline didn’t really reflect the game. The boys were good and had a real dig. They were 8-4 up at one stage, and then they scored a couple of tries just before the break, and then a couple of late tries in the second-half which just took the game away from us. It was a close contest as far as I was concerned, and they will certainly know that they will have been in a game.”

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Aston was critical of his side in their previous outing after a poor display saw his side knocked out of the Challenge Cup by Leigh Centurions.

This performance was back to the standards that the Eagles chief has witnessed most weeks in 2019, with the defeat against Toronto only their second in the league so far.

The 51-year-old knows that there are still areas to work on, but with the addition of Warrington prop Pat Moran on loan, plus the help from dual-registration partners London Broncos, his options look much healthier.

There’s no doubt most teams won’t be able to match the clinical nature of the Wolfpack, with Aston adamant it was the finishing which was the big difference between the two sides.

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He added: “They scored five tries on the last play, so that disappointedme a little, but certainly I was immensely proud of how we went about our business. We caused them some trouble, there was no doubt about that. We just needed to be clinical, and we weren't. We just missed a couple of jumps at times, and things like that. We had a dig, so credit to them.”