AS they prepare for their first reunion with Wigan Warriors since losing the Challenge Cup Final to them, Sam Burgess has rejected any notion that Warrington Wolves “owe them one.”
Instead, he insisted the players owed it to themselves to put on a better performance than they delivered at Wembley when they visit the Brick Community Stadium on Friday.
The Wire will move level on points with their neighbours at the top of Super League with a victory although as they and many others have found out, that is much easier said than done.
With Wigan having not lost at home for more than a year and having triumphed in the past seven meetings between the sides, history is certainly against Burgess’ boys but he insists it is a challenge they are going to meet head-on.
However, he says payback will not be a motivating factor for his side.
“We owe it to ourselves. It’s not about owing them one as I don’t think that works,” he said.
“We owe it to ourselves to put a better performance out there.
“It’s a great challenge for us as a group to go to Wigan and play. They’re the champions for a reason, we’ve played them a couple of times this year so we know what they’re about.
“We’re looking forward to the challenge like every other week. Wigan are the challenge ahead of us at the moment.”
The chance to close the gap at the top has come about due to Wigan suffering a surprise defeat at Hull FC in Round 18, allowing Warrington and Hull KR to edge closer to them by virtue of victories over St Helens and Leeds Rhinos respectively.
It was a result that brought the Warriors’ 10-match winning run to an end, but Burgess is wary of what their response will be.
“Everyone has bad days, don’t they? It’s human nature,” he said.
“Teams have little bumps but I guarantee they will be a different team on Friday night.
“They’re very consistent – I daresay they’ve been the most consistent team for the past two years.
“They’re very hard to break down and they compete really hard as champion teams do.
“Consistency is key and without argument, they’ve been the most consistent.”
Recent history may not favour them in terms of this fixture, but Warrington will make the short trip down the A49 brimming with confidence.
They battled through the adversity of having James Harrison sent off after just 20 minutes and even spending a period with just 11 men to pull off a memorable victory at St Helens last time out to stretch their winning run to four matches.
While their head coach says there is a lot they can take out of the victory in terms of confidence and belief, he insists they cannot afford to dwell on it.
“We’re developing as a group and figuring out what works and what doesn’t,” he said.
“We’ve had shaky games and games where we’ve managed to put things together for long periods of time.
“We managed adversity really well on Friday and we’ll take some great lessons from that, but the clock resets every Monday morning here.
“They’ll have learned a lot about each other on Friday night through going through that together. They should have a tighter bond with more belief and confidence because of it.
“As we keep saying, though, if it was a loss we’d have moved forward and reset.
“What’s been doesn’t count much for what’s coming. We don’t dwell on wins and losses too much.”
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