The Liam Farrell Column: Depleted Warriors still have confidence

The Super League regular season '“ as in, before the Super-8s start '“ passed the halfway point last weekend.
Youngsters such as Tom Davies have impressed columnist Liam Farrell this seasonYoungsters such as Tom Davies have impressed columnist Liam Farrell this season
Youngsters such as Tom Davies have impressed columnist Liam Farrell this season

Usually, the competition has taken shape by now, but this year I don’t think it’s the case.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are a few changes.

Warrington are in the bottom-four and I still think they may creep up the table.

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I’m not sure who they’ll replace, and I’m not dead-set on who the top-four will be.

I don’t want to try and predict who may drop out and who may climb in, because one thing this season has certainly been is unpredictable.

And it’s been great for the competition. I’ve enjoyed putting a game on TV, expecting one result and getting another.

Wakefield are winning more games, Salford and Cas’ are up there in the top-three. It’s freshened it up.

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And it has been tough – I can honestly say we’ve not had an easy game all year.

We’re not happy to have lost four matches, but from a neutral view, this is what we want, a more level game.

From our point of view,

it’s an encouraging sign that we’ve not performed to our potential and we’re still up there.

Fingers crossed in the second-half of the season we can do that, and we’ll start seeing some more comfortable scorelines.

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First up is Salford and it goes without saying we’ll need to be a lot better than we were at Castleford last Saturday.

That was a tough one to stomach.

We were schooled – they were far too good, we didn’t control them.

We started really poor and it just got worse and worse.

There are no excuses, Cas’ were far too good for us on the day and everything seemed to be coming off for them.

They were good, but we didn’t help ourselves with our defensive errors.

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As I’ve got older, I’ve learned to handle losses more than when I was younger.

But that one was annoying me all weekend. I went to bed on Saturday night thinking about it and woke up thinking about it – it consumed me. My missus didn’t want much to do with me because I was so grumpy!

I don’t think you can read too much into it. It’s not as if you can say, ‘Wigan can’t beat Cas this year’ – it doesn’t necessarily mean that, but it still hurt.

The good thing about our sport is we don’t have to wait long for the chance to put things right.

And we’re going to have to be on our game to beat Salford.

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They are doing really well, the players they’ve got a good balance to their squad; strong middles, good ball carriers and smart halfbacks.

They’ve got quite a settled side, we’ve obviously had a fair bit of disruption, but we’ll still go into the game confident.

Waney has told the players who come in they have got a great chance.

You only have to look at our wingers, Liam Marshall and Tom Davies, they’ve done so well they’ve cemented their wing spots.

I got my chance they exact same way.

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George Carmont was injured, Phil Bailey went to centre and I came in at second-row, thinking I’d be happy with three or four games.

But I can look back and say I did well enough to keep my spot, and that’s the same for anyone else coming into this team.