The Liam Farrell Column: I can sense lads are desperate to atone

Which is tough to take because I love the concept.

I think it’s gone from strength to strength and everyone I speaks to seems to think the same.

It’s a chance to have a weekend away, go to a nice stadium and watch other teams, too.

I enjoyed The Etihad, and Newcastle seems to be a popular choice.

I like mixing it up and changing the venue – maybe Arsenal’s Emirates could be looked at – if we could get it going down there, it would be a great shout.

As long as I’ve been in the team we’ve always done well at the Magic Weekends.

We’ll no doubt be favourites on Saturday, but I can assure you none of the lads will be thinking they’re going up against the bottom-placed team.

We’ll be looking at Leeds’ squad, not the league table. For me, the two don’t marry up.

Even though they lost some quality in the off-season they have international-standard players, and many of the same players who helped them win the treble last year.

I never predicted they would struggle – from treble-champions to bottom of the table – but I’m sure they’ve still got an aim of getting into that eight before the season splits.

Confidence is a strange thing in sport. I can remember 2013 we’d go on winning streaks and it felt hard for teams to beat us, and I’ve had it the other way, at other times you can be struggling for form, and when you’ve not got confident it is hard to regain it. When that happens, you need to stay patient and concentrate on doing all the little things right, and trust that it will come back.

For Leeds, there is no better chance to turn their season around than this weekend - I think this occasion may bring the best out of them.

That’s how we’re approaching it.

And the lads all realise they need to put in a good performance after the 30-16 loss to Hull FC last Friday night.

I felt terrible watching it. I felt helpless. I just wanted to be out there with the lads.

We got bullied by a good Hull team, and out-played.

If you look at the tries in isolation, they were soft on our part - which hurt us, because we pride ourselves on being hard to break down.

When you’re beaten by a well-structured play, it’s easier to stomach, but some of the tries we let in were given to Hull.

Which is not to say they didn’t deserve the win - they did. They were much better than us.

I wasn’t in the review, but by all accounts it was pretty intense. I can sense the lads are desperate to make amends this weekend.

I’m sorry. To anyone served a pint by me on Saturday, I’m sorry!

We held a fans’ day before the Under-19s game at Orrell and I had a stint behind the bar.

It went really well, even if a few might be annoyed with some of the pints I pulled.

I felt guilty taking £3.20 off them! I’ve never had a bar job, and it was made worse by the fact Joel Tomkins was next to me, doing a great job, But all round it was a good day, the lads all got involved involved with the barbeque and different stalls, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.