Warrington recovered from a nightmare start to gain a richly-deserved victory over Hull at the KC Stadium.

The Wolves, with something of a makeshift line-up, conceded two early tries with former Hull favourite Garreth Carvell in the sin bin, trailed 16-6 early in the second half and only went in front for the first time eight minutes from the end.

But they dominated the second half, with stand-off Lee Briers marshalling the side superbly on his return from injury to set up tries for Chris Bridge, Simon Grix and Vinnie Anderson.

The return of Briers and skipper Adrian Morley had a galvanising effect on the visitors, who were without goalkicking winger Chris Hicks, the scorer of 10 tries in the last four games, and fellow Australian back Matt King through injury.

Yet it all started so promisingly for Hull, despite the absence of skipper Lee Radford with a back injury.

Carvell, making his first visit to the KC Stadium since his controversial departure at the end of last season, was lectured and put on report by referee Steve Ganson for a high tackle on Richard Horne after only four minutes.

But the warning went unheeded and he was sin-binned only a minute later for using an elbow on his former front row team-mate Ewan Dowes, who is a close friend and neighbour of his in Leeds.

Hull made Carvell pay for his indiscretion by scoring the game's first try in his absence, which stemmed from a misdirected pass by Warrington scrum-half Michael Monaghan, who had a mixed evening for the visitors.

Three-quarters Richard Whiting and Mark Calderwood both showed neat footwork to hack the ball towards the visitors' tryline and Whiting maintained his composure to pick up and score in one delightful move.

The Wolves were still down to 12 men when Hull grabbed a second try, Danny Tickle offloading superbly from the tackle to release centre Kirk Yeaman, and on-loan winger Jodie Broughton, who was recalled to the side in place of the injured Graeme Horne, raced over unopposed.

Tickle made up for an earlier missed penalty by converting both tries to give his side a 12-0 lead but Warrington pulled a try back after 23 minutes when centre Grix took Louis Anderson's pass to wrong-foot full-back Horne.

Bridge added the goal to cut the deficit to only six points but Tickle kicked penalties either side of the interval to make it 16-6.

Warrington produced their best spell of the match in the third quarter to bring the best out of the Hull defence.

Substitute Paul Wood lost the ball going for the line and Hull were indebted to a crunching tackle by Yeaman on a flying Chris Riley.

The pressure finally paid off after 61 minutes when Mickey Higham's darting run sucked in the Hull defence and Monaghan's long ball enabled Bridge to cross unopposed at the corner.

Briers was able to keep the momentum going with his clever kicking game and Warrington added another try only four minutes later when his long pass enabled Grix to go over for his second try.

Bridge was wide with both conversion attempts but the visitors went in front for the first time in the 72nd minute when they again moved the ball wide and Vinnie Anderson took Bridge's pass to cross at the corner.

Hull lost Danny Washbrook through injury, which paved the way for 19-year-old Josh Hodgson to make his debut.