Farrell: Warriors need to put emotions aside for derby

Wigan have won all their traditional Easter weekend derbies since 2010 - the year Farrell broke into the first-team.

The build-up to this meeting has come under sharper focus, with the Warriors without a win in four games and St Helens looking to do better than their 14-14 draw with Huddersfield last weekend, their second game without a win.

“We obviously play a couple more times in the year but, with the tradition, this Good Friday fixture seems to be the big one,” said Farrell, who memorably scored a dramatic match-winner in the 2011.

“Fans treat it like a Cup final, they all look forward to it, and we do too.”

Wigan have slipped down the table to sixth following successive defeats by Castleford, Leeds and Hull FC, and a draw against Huddersfield.

Shaun Wane is missing a string of frontline players and Farrell says they are taking their rocky spell with the same cool approach as they treated their five-game winning start to the year.

“You have to - you don’t get carried away when you win a few, and it’s the same now,” the England forward said. “It’s not the club’s standards, but you’ve got to take the good parts with the rough patches. It’s disappointing not to win but no-one is panicking. The effort is there - if it wasn’t, then we’d be worried - there are just some details we need to fix.”

Thursday’s 27-10 loss to Castleford was the first time they have been well-beaten this year.

“This is a derby, there’ll be a lot of build-up - we need to fix some things up before then,” he said. “We need to put emotions aside a bit and smarten up, because we were a bit soft in D for a couple of tries. We didn’t deserve the game, our finishes weren’t great and we lost the ruck. We did’t really give ourselves a chance.”