John Bateman wants to see further improvement from Wigan Warriors heading into their sixth round Challenge Cup tie

Matty Peet’s side have won five out of their six opening Super League games, and start their Challenge Cup campaign against Salford Red Devils at the DW Stadium on Friday (K.O. 7.35pm).

Bateman says despite the good start, there are still plenty of things for the squad to build on going forward, but was happy with how they bounced back from the defeat to Catalans Dragons in the recent game against Castleford Tigers.

He said: “Everything is pretty decent. We’ve not had too bad a start but we’ve still got things to improve on. The most important thing when you’ve lost is winning again, and that’s what we did.

“In the second half of the Castleford game we weren’t good enough, we conceded too many points back to back, but we still won by 10 points. It’s something for us to work on moving forward.

“We need to be getting those wins to move our game forward as a team, that’s what it is all about. This week gives us another opportunity to go and put things right.

“The Challenge Cup is a completely different ball game to the Super League, we need to take our opportunities because it is a straight knockout."

Bateman says the aim of the team is to successfully play the brand of rugby they are striving towards.

“I’d be very surprised if you rang any rugby player and they thought there had been a perfect game,” he added.

"You never get it, you get as close as you can to being good at what you want to be good at.

“It’s about going out there training through the process of what you have been through during the week. We’ve still got a pretty new spine, so it’s about ticking things off and improving.

“The new players who have come in have been really good. We’ve got a good culture and a good set of players. The young ones want to learn and get better, they want to fight for opportunities because it’s hard if you don’t have that.”