\n It will not be this week after he was again left out of the 21-man squad for The Wire’s first ever Super League clash with York Knights on Friday, with Burgess having named an unchanged selection for the second week in a row.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Wire boss also confirmed his star winger would also not be considered for the Challenge Cup fourth-round clash with Goole Vikings next weekend, with the Super League Round Five game against Castleford Tigers earmarked for his comeback.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ashton has not featured since his 2025 season was ended early by an ACL injury suffered during the Challenge Cup semi-final win over Leigh Leopards in May – he was thought to be in contention for last week’s clash with Wakefield Trinity before being struck down by illness.\n<\/p>\n
\n As a result, Burgess revealed Ashton had dropped below his optimum weight but confirmed he remains in full training with his teammates.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Matty won\u2019t be up for selection until Castleford \u2013 that\u2019s the plan with him,” he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He was sick last week and he lost a bit of weight, so we just decided we wanted to hit a few more markers with him before putting him up for selection against Castleford.\n<\/p>\n
\n “He\u2019s training fully \u2013 he\u2019s doing everything with us and has been for four weeks. He missed three or four days last week as he was pretty ill and with that, he lost a bit of weight.\n<\/p>\n
\n “With Matty, the longer we leave it, the risk becomes less and the illness gave us another week or two where we could take that risk away from him.\n<\/p>\n
\n “When it gets to Castleford, that will be 11 months at which point it will be a much better time.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Matty\u2019s pushing \u2013 he didn\u2019t talk to me for a week after I didn\u2019t pick him for Round One so he\u2019s keen to play, but we\u2019re just finding that balance as performance staff.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Ade Gardner (head of performance) has taken a strong lead on that with Nick (Murphy, physio) in terms of a duty of care for Matty. He\u2019s ready to go but it\u2019s just a bit of a gut feeling at the minute.”\n<\/p>\n
\n As such, Josh Smith – fresh from a try and an assist during the Round Two victory over Wakefield Trinity on Saturday – is set to continue on the left wing as Burgess looks set to name an unchanged 17 for the third match in a row.\n<\/p>\n
\n That is something he has not been able to do during his time as Warrington head coach and given the amount of injuries currently being suffered elsewhere in Super League, it puts him in an enviable position.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I don\u2019t want to jinx anything \u2013 we play a collision sport so its inevitable, but we\u2019ve been relatively healthy which you can put down to a number of things.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The boys had a good, tough pre-season to get themselves ready to play, and the games we\u2019ve been in have been tight but ones we\u2019ve felt in control of.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We\u2019ll be challenged at some point but for now, it\u2019s making some decisions really hard because a lot of them are ready to play.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It will not be this week after he was again left out of the 21-man squad for The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-457942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}