‘Ask him to smile’: Wayne’s no-show after dental disaster as Latrell defended over high shot

“But it does make it more difficult to build cohesion and get our execution spot on so that’s where we’re at. We’ve got to deal with it, get back on the training pitch and come back next week better.”

Hornby was pressed on Latrell Mitchell’s sin bin and the high tackle on Sua Fa’alogo that has him looking at a potential ban.

“I honestly didn’t get a real good look at it, but it did look like he lowered his level a fair bit and Latrell tried to lower his level,” Hornby said.

“At the end of the day we’ve got nothing more to say on it because it’s going to be dealt with in the judiciary, so I guess I’ll leave it at that.

“I thought they both tried, well he was falling and I thought that Latrell tried to lower his level, but when you’re watching in slow-mo it obviously looks a lot worse than what it does when it’s split second stuff, so the judiciary will take care of it and we’ll live with it.”

Mitchell had support from Storm skipper Cameron Munster.

“It’s a contact sport and I know we’re trying to protect players but it’s very hard to determine how hard (the force) is,” Munster said.

“It’s slippery out there, it’s wet, there’a a lot of speed, Sua’s very quick, Latrell’s very big. I don’t know where you want Latrell to go there.

“Sua’s obviously trying to engage him before the pass and he’s slipped over. I feel like sometimes it’s hard to get out of those positions when you’re fully committed to the contact.

“There wasn’t a heap of malice by the look at it. I know where the game is trying to go ny protecting players but as long as we keep it consistent around the game I don’t have a problem with it.

“I know it didn’t look good but I don’t know where you want him to go there as well.”

Hornby admitted a ban for Mitchell would be a blow to the team, but he remains confident they have the players to fill the void.

“It would but we’ve still got enough good plays to win games, so we showed that last year that when we get it right execution wise there’s no reason why we can’t still win games,” Hornby said.

“So the next guy will come in and do a great job for us and we just got to get back to working hard and make sure we can do that next week.”

Souths’ best player Jack Wighton was round of his side’s effort but conceded they need to clean up their errors after three straight losses.

“Coming off last week we can take a lot of positives out of that,” Wighton said.

“You know we’ve got a young team, a lot of position changes and you know we’re sticking it to one of the better teams in the comp and we’re in the game the whole time.

“But we’re still making errors, so we’ll take a lot of confidence out of that but if we keep making the same errors we’re going to be getting the same results so we’re just trying to fix that.”