Adrian Lam's reaction after Wigan Warriors' 14-6 loss at Wakefield

He praised the youngsters who came into the side - including 18-year-old debutant Brad O'Neill - for their effort.

Yet despite missing 10 frontline stars to either injury, suspension of representative duty, he refused to make excuses for some of the schoolboy errors at crucial times and blamed a lack of confidence for their poor attack.

Lam said: "I can’t fault the effort, we tried hard the whole time.

“We’ve lost a lot of confidence in what we’re doing at the moment which is affecting us and we were guilty of doing some really dumb things at crucial times and we didn’t manage the game at crucial times.

“When we scored that try in the second half it was like a weight lifted off our shoulders and it’s difficult to work out why the confidence is low but it’s something we’ve just got to keep working through it."

Umyla Hanley's second-half try cut the gap to 12-6 and offered brief hope Wigan could give themselves a chance.

But when Harry Smith misfired a dropout which failed to go 10m, it gave Mason Lino the simplest of penalties to open up an eight-point gap.

“We’re a tough enough team to grind out games but we made some really unacceptable errors which really cost us and we’ll address that in the next few days," said Lam.

“I thought the young boys did a good job for us for the most part. James McDonnell played really well having come in at last minute injured and Kai Pearce-Paul will certainly be a handful for us moving forward.

“I was really happy with Brad O’Neill making his debut today and I think he’s got a big future at our club so we’re really pleased for him.

“We do have a lot of players out but I’m not making excuses, it’s more than that and the players who are in there have to stick together to get through this period before we welcome some players back.”

Wigan face Warrington and St Helens in the next 10 days though Lam should be able to welcome back up to six of the 10 senior players who missed out.

Trinity led 12-0 at half-time and coach Chris Chester said: "I thought my guys defended well. We had some guys there who hadn't played for a number of weeks, I thought it was a real team effort.

"There was a period in the second half where they rolled us through the middle and we just kept coming up with some special plays."