Adrian Lam says Wigan Warriors' defensive problems not to do with new structure

In three of their last four games, they have taken a lead but had allowed their opponents to claw back in front.

And he says the bad habit has nothing to do with the new structure he has introduced. “We’re conceding a lot of easy tries through the middle and that’s not structure, it’s attitude,” he said ahead of tomorrow’s visit of Castleford.

“We had a long meeting about it this week. We need to aim up – Cas’ have some of the biggest forwards in the competition.”

Wigan threw away a 20-0 advantage at Castleford earlier this month and while their lead at Wakefield was only by 4-0, they leaked an incredible four tries in six minutes to end up chasing a game they eventually lost.

The trend continued at Salford on Monday, when they trailed midway through the second-half – despite having raced into a 14-0 lead - only to get out of jail with Zak Hardaker’s late try.

“It’s frustrating because if we continue to do that we’ll continue to struggle,” he said. “Wigan won a Grand Final on the back of their defence – and we will get to that point at some stage.

“If we score eight or 12 points we should go on and win the game from there.”

While Lam has lamented their injury problems, he says it is as much the lack of cohesion which isn’t helping.

“One or two senior players in the middle would help,” he said. “But playing the same team for two weeks in a row would help. We haven’t had the same team two weeks in a row, we felt we got it right against Catalans and kept to zero, and then the week later there are five changes. So we need that cohesion.

“At this time our attack is way ahead of last year, and that’s a positive, but we need to defend better. We’re scoring 20 or 30 points and potentially losing games.

“We’re scoring a lot more points but we’re leaking more in. We need to change that.”