Warrington Wolves head coach Sam Burgess has defended his forward pack’s physicality after the loss to Catalans Dragons, whilst revealing two injury concerns to key men within that pack.
Wire were beaten for just the second time this season as Catalans ran out 38-22 winners in Perpignan, despite Warrington having taken a 10-0 lead early on and also leading in the second-half.
A barrage of 28 unanswered points, including a Lewis Dodd hat-trick, saw Les Dracs cruise to a win before a late consolation try came from Max Wood with Sam Burgess left ruing his side’s physicality.
Despite that, he labelled questions of the pack’s physicality ‘disrespectful’ when speaking post-match in his presser, shared on the Warrington Wolves YouTube channel.
“We lost the game in a lot of areas tonight, probably more so the physical side,” Burgess explained when beginning his assessment.
“I must say that I thought Catalans were very good. They played with a lot of energy and they made us pay for it. We had a tough period in the first half and we didn’t manage well out the back of that.”
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Warrington Wolves boss confirms double injury concern in forward pack
Winger Matty Ashton was sent to the sin bin late in the first half and despite coming through that, Wire then folded from the 50th minute onwards and Burgess attributed the defeat to a lack of energy.
“That period itself wasn’t why we lost but we didn’t manage well out the back of it,” he said of Ashton’s sin bin.
“Although we were 10-0 up, we didn’t quite look ourselves. We didn’t have that same energy that we’ve been bringing but that’s okay. We’ve played eight or nine games now so these things do happen, we just need to get back, reset, and go again.”
When asked if he was ‘confident’ his side could handle packs as big as Catalans, given pre-season questioning of whether the Warrington pack was big enough, Burgess laughed: “I think so, yeah. We were up against a good side, I understand your question but I think it’s a bit disrespectful to the team.”
Despite the defeat being their second in their last three Super League games, Warrington still remain just two points off the top of the table and Burgess called for calm.
He said: “When we win well, we try and stay level, so it’s the same when we lose. We’ll take things out of the game where we can improve, a lot of them are really simple. A couple of effort areas, we weren’t quite pushing as hard off the ball. Defensively, we lost the collision a bit, and I thought Catalans were very good and played with a lot of energy. They’ve two great halves and they made us pay at times.”
He also confirmed that James Harrison’s ankle injury will be scanned, with he and Toafofoa Sipley both picking up issues in the physical battle.
On Harrison he said: “We don’t know at the moment. It’s an ankle injury so we’ll have to get scans and go from there.
“We’ll have to reassess when we get back. We’ll travel back tomorrow (Sunday) and we’ll reassess on Monday or Tuesday and see what we’ve got but we picked up a few bumps tonight.
“Jimmy didn’t go back on and I think Toff (Sipley) maybe injured that leg again, so we’ll see how they pull up.”
