Wakefield Trinity head coach Daryl Powell insists his side possess the inner belief needed to cause a massive upset against Wigan Warriors in Saturday’s Betfred Super League Play-Off semi-final.

Trinity travel to The Brick Community Stadium aiming to book a spot in the Grand Final at Old Trafford, entering as heavy underdogs against a formidable Wigan outfit.

Despite the scale of the task, Powell is adamant his squad will not be overawed by the occasion, pointing to their recent narrow trip to Wigan and a battle-hardening end-of-season run as key factors in their readiness.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Powell laid out the tactical mindset and composure required to challenge Matt Peet’s side for a place in the showpiece event.

“It’s a really big game. You don’t want to overplay it because you just want the boys to go and play the game as they see it,” Powell said.

“I think that’s important that we don’t get carried away with how big it is. I think it’s an important game for us.

“We’ve worked hard all year to put ourselves in this position and we’ve given ourselves a good opportunity. I think it’s obvious that we’re coming up against a team who everybody’s viewing as the best team in the comp.”

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“They’ve won their last 14, so I don’t think there’ll be many putting a lot of money on us this week, but I just feel like there’s an inner confidence that we can go and enjoy this challenge, which is a big challenge going to Wigan.

“I think the benefit we’ve got is we went there a couple of weeks back and I thought we were pretty close in that game so there’s a few things we’d need to improve from that.”

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Watching Wigan closely in recent weeks, Powell has been impressed by the clinical execution and defensive steel, but maintains that Trinity can match anyone when firing on all cylinders.

“I was just watching Wigan over the last few weeks as well,” Powell admitted.

“I feel like, particularly against Leeds, I thought they were in a great place. The defence was like it normally is and their execution was great… Don’t play the occasion, play the game.

“I think that’s the most important thing. Don’t look too far ahead, just look where we are. Play the game, stay calm.

“I think we’ve been a really consistent team all year and done lots of quality things. We’ve got an outstanding group of players and if everybody plays to their potential, then we give ourselves a great chance.

“Wigan are clear favourites, I think… but if everybody plays as well as they can, then we’ve got one of the best teams in the comp.”

Reflecting on how Trinity prepared for the play-off pressure cooker, Powell emphasized that their grueling late-season fixture schedule has served as the ultimate preparation.

“Everybody was asking me a few weeks back about whether I felt like the tough run-in was good for us and I think it was,” Powell explained.

“We played Leeds and we were shooting for potentially first at that point and we lost the game in the second half.

A couple of weeks after that, we played Wigan and that was a great game where we learned a lot of lessons about not giving them scraps to feed off and then since then, we’ve gone bang, bang, bang, bang.

We’ve won four games, we’ve been playing against teams that are in the top six, so I think using all that experience means we’re pretty tuned in. We aren’t dipping our toe in and out of tough games and softer games.”