Wigan Warriors: The Liam Farrell column

The loss to Hull KR was followed by Saturday’s defeat at Warrington which knocked us out of the Challenge Cup.

We’ve not got much time to feel sorry for ourselves. Which I’m glad about – when you’ve played as poorly as we did against Warrington, you just want the chance to make it right.

If we go to Wakefield and get the result, we could make things look pretty rosy again.

We’re disappointed to be out of the Cup, but big picture, we’re still second in the ladder, we’ve still had a good season so far and we’re still in a good position to be challenging for the League Leaders’ Shield.

It won’t be easy tonight. Trips to Wakefield rarely are.

I doubt we’ll talk about our last game there – when we were nilled on the final day of last season – but it will be in the back of my mind. Everyone realises now that playing Wakefield, especially on their own turf, is a really hard task.

We need a good performance to get the win, and we want a good performance to satisfy ourselves after last weekend.

We just didn’t give ourselves a chance against Warrington.

Credit to them, they dominated us down the middle and controlled the game. We knew they would be motivated after our win at the Magic Weekend two weeks earlier, and we simply didn’t react to it. We now haven’t scored in three consecutive halves of play, but I’m not worried about our attack.

That may sound strange, but if things were going our way in the match, I’m sure we’d have scored as many points as Warrington did, if not more.

It’s not simply a case of our attack not being good enough.

It’s the fact that it’s hard to make your attack work when you’ve defended so poorly. Warrington thrive on offloads and fast play-the-balls and we didn’t do a good enough job containing them.

When you’re fatigued, it affects your speed, your timing, your shape.

I’ll admit it, I was gassed during that match because Warrington had had a lot more good possession.

When you’re in that cycle, it’s very hard to break and on the flipside, when you’re the dominant team, it’s a great feeling because you grow in confidence and get on a roll.

Things come off when you’re fresher and when you’re not as fatigued.

People can say, ‘you were unlucky on the day’, but we weren’t last Saturday because we didn’t earn the right.

We let ourselves down. And we’re determined to put it right when we face Wakefield.