Sam Burgess on Warrington Wolves' Huddersfield Giants trip

However, head coach Sam Burgess insists he will not send his team out at Huddersfield Giants on Saturday recklessly chasing points.

The Wire go into the penultimate round of regular-season fixtures trailing second-place Hull KR by two points.

They are also 58 points worse off in terms of points difference than the Robins, but many observers have highlighted their remaining games against struggling opposition in Huddersfield and London Broncos as a chance to overturn that, with Willie Peters’ men facing tough games against play-off chasers Leigh Leopards and Leeds Rhinos.

When the points difference question was put to him, however, Burgess insists there is a process his side must respect and “a big price to pay” before worrying about such things.

Saturday's win over St Helens guaranteed Warrington would finish no lower than third and kept their top-two hopes alive (Image: Neil Ashurst/P&B Pictures)

“For us, it’s about just getting a performance as it has been all year,” he said.

“I think we left a few points out there last week, but we’re not playing for that. We’re playing to get our performance right.

“If we get the defensive side right, points kind of come for us.

“We’ve got to respect that and that’s our main focus. There’s a big price to pay before we get to points.

“Working hard on our defence has been a cornerstone of our year but then, we need to get ourselves in good areas and execute when we get the opportunity, which we probably lacked at the weekend so we’ve tried to adjust that.”

As Burgess mentions, Warrington are seeking to make improvements to their attacking output in order to help them not just with the points difference equation, but to give them the best possible chance in the play-offs.

And with slightly longer turnaround from their last match, they have had time to put in the work on the training ground in order to make those tweaks.

“We’ve had a productive week,” the Wire boss said.

“With a seven-day turnaround, we’ve managed to get out on the field a couple of times so we’ve had a look at a few tweaks and getting our combinations a bit more fluid.

“We’ve worked a bit on getting things to be a bit smoother and hopefully, we’ll see that this week if we get the right opportunities.”

They are heavily favoured to get plenty of those by most on Saturday as they face a Giants side that has struggled for any sort of consistency and form in 2024.

Having once again been backed to perform well, the Yorkshiremen sit in ninth place and can go no higher in the games that remain.

The Giants – now under the permanent guidance of former England half-back Luke Robinson – have also lost both games against The Wire heavily this year – 46-10 in May’s Challenge Cup semi-final and 48-0 in Super League Round 16 in July.

Matt Dufty celebrates during the Challenge Cup semi-final win over Huddersfield in May (Image: SWPix.com)

But with the pressure off, Burgess is wary of what they may throw at his side.

“They’ve had a pretty tough year in a few different aspects, but they’re showing some good stuff out there,” he said.

“I watched them last week and they’ve had a couple of good performances, so we’re looking at it like we look at any other game and challenge.

“We understand they’ve got some quality players, so we’ve got to be good defensively to nullify that.

“I’ve formed an opinion of how I think they’re going to play and as coaching staff, we’ll come up with a plan around how we think we can counter it as best we can.

“We can’t predict the future with it but we’ve got a few different styles we can adapt and move if we see something different from them.”