Warrington Wolves have experienced some turbulence in recent weeks, despite the fact that they may have been flying through mostly clear skies in 2024.
They therefore intend to bounce back from Hull FC’s visit to The Halliwell Jones Stadium tomorrow, both in terms of performance and outcome.
The Wire lost 17–12 on Saturday, falling to Salford Red Devils, who became just the second team to defeat them this year after Catalans Dragons.
Despite a similarly uneven performance the week before, they had prevailed over Leigh Leopards, but Sam Burgess maintains he hasn’t seen anything to be unduly concerned about in the last two weeks.
“I’m not too upset about it; obviously, I would have preferred the outcome, but we also consider the performance. The coach’s primary concern is not the result, he stated.
“I just felt that we didn’t perform up to our usual level, but their effort is commendable.”
They gave it their all to win the game, but we simply lost too many crucial moments. It’s those times we need to improve.
“We simply didn’t win the game, even though we had a chance to. I’m not too worried about it.
In terms of defence, we were fairly solid. We had a few technical difficulties, but we are able to resolve those issues.
“We need to be a little more organised on the other side of the ball, but we’re not giving up a lot of points.”
With Tony Smith out of the picture after Grix’s 179-game tenure at Hull ended in 2014, Warrington will be the heavy favourite to turn things around against a struggling Black and Whites team captained by a former Wire favourite in Simon Grix, who is now the interim head coach.
This season, they have only triumphed once, and in four of their last six games, they have given up 50 points or more.
Burgess, though, maintains that he is basing his assessment of the opposition for tomorrow on a much-better performance that saw them lose 18–12 to Leeds Rhinos in their most recent match on Sunday.
They’ve seen a lot of change, and the club is currently involved in its own events,” he stated.
We need to pay close attention to our own performance because we struggled to get into the swing of things last week and lost our momentum.
It is imperative that we attempt to rectify that this week, irrespective of Hull’s arrival.
They tried last week when I took them off. They had some young guys in there that were very enthusiastic, and this week they’ll have guys like Jake Trueman and Tom Briscoe back, who will give them something extra.
You don’t make the first team if you don’t have the competitive mentality. We’re playing at the highest level, and it’s intense.
“We have to improve upon last week’s performance because we can only control what we bring to the game.
They will occasionally break us down, but it’s up to us how we handle it. We’ll manage them as best we can.
“We’ve adjusted our training to give ourselves the best chance of a performance on Friday because we have a short turnaround.
It’s risky to play against a team that has nothing to lose, but our challenge is and has always been in the room.
“We need to have the proper mindset and play our best on Friday night.”
