Boss Dave Clark admitted ill-discipline cost Workington Town the win over Newcastle Thunder in yesterday's League One opener.

Town went under 24-20 at the hands of Newcastle for a second week, despite out-scoring them by four tries to three.

But the boot of Benn Hardcastle proved Workington's undoing as he put away three penalties on top of three conversions to inch his side ahead.

"Our discipline was disappointing, especially after last week," said Clark.

"We gave away a tremendous amount of penalties defensively so, to do it again today, it really hurt us.

"You can't compete in this competition giving away that much ball and errors as well.

"We've got to learn from this game and move forward to Oxford next week.

"You can't allow teams to achieve field position by giving away penalties and that's down to our discipline and we have to work harder on that as a team moving forward."

Clark admitted there were bright spots and he said his team needed to regain their pre-season form as they moved forward.

He added: "There were parts of the game where I thought we were dominant.

"We got some points on the board and we were going forward well so it's there.

"We've shown that we can do it through pre-season, so it's now trying to get that formula back and start doing it for longer periods of the game.

"And we must cut down on the penalties and errors because we were fighting against ourselves there."

He also had praise for on-loan Wigan duo Macauley Davies and Jack Higginson.

He said: "I thought the Wigan boys did well, they put their hands up and performed quite well, along with a few of our players but we need everyone playing well and not just a few."