Wigan Warriors head coach Adrian Lam believes that his team can only improve in the coming weeks despite having started the campaign with a 100%-win record in all competitions including five wins from five in Super League.
Lam – a former Warriors player – took the helm at the DW Stadium in 2019 and won the League Leaders’ Shield last year but lost out in the Grand Final to St Helens.
Vying for success this year in both Super League and the Challenge Cup, the 50-year-old expects more is to come from his side, as he revealed to Prost International in the build-up to their Quarter-final cup clash on Saturday – May 8.
“I hope that we can step up a gear. Even though we have been winning, some of our players are still yet to find their best form of the season, which is promising. I’m always into them about making sure that they are improving every week and we’re in a place now where there’s a good base of fitness in every player.
“All the cobwebs are washed off so let’s hope that we can find some better form in the next month, starting this weekend. We’ll obviously work hard on trying to improve every week and this is another week for us to make sure that we stand up in the biggest game of the year so far”
Their Challenge Cup opponents will be Hull FC, who – ironically – the Warriors faced and defeated last time out in round 5 of the Super League campaign.
Head coach Lam admits that the scheduling of back-to-back clashes with the Black and Whites have forced him into a more strategic way of thinking.
“It’s been a really tough one to manage. There was a little bit of strategy going into game one and there will be going into game two. We’ve had a plan for these two weeks for about four weeks, since we’ve known that it would be back-to-back games.
“That plan has always got to keep ticking over because there’s strategy involved – resting players and making sure that you don’t show your hand in the first week. We’re sticking to that [plan]and we’re excited about the challenge.
“We slipped up in last year’s Semi-final [losing 26-12 to eventual winners Leeds Rhinos]and we’re still hurting from that, so we want to make sure that we give ourselves every opportunity to put that right.”
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