{"id":590038,"date":"2026-05-18T05:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/590038\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T05:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:34:18","slug":"wigan-warriors-star-makes-ashes-snub-admission-as-world-cup-goals-outlined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/590038\/","title":{"rendered":"Wigan Warriors star makes Ashes snub admission as World Cup goals outlined"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Wigan Warriors forward Junior Nsemba has admitted that his 2025 Ashes snub has helped put the fire in his belly and fuel him for what is becoming an impressive personal season.<\/p>\n

Nsemba has had plenty of responsibility put on him at times in 2026 due to the fact that captain Liam Farrell has not been pairing him in the second-row for much of the season, on account of covering in the centres.<\/p>\n

After breaking onto the scene in 2023, Nsemba kicked on and had a wonderful 2024 but his form dipped last year, leading to him missing out on Ashes selection.<\/p>\n

That was a contentious call by Shaun Wane as many felt that despite Nsemba\u2019s form not being the best, his sheer size and athleticism was enough to challenge the Australians.<\/p>\n

One thing that Ashes snub did allow was for the 21-year-old to have a full pre-season with Wigan Warriors and he\u2019s now explained that to be one of the reasons why he is in such fine form.<\/p>\n

After Wigan defeated Leeds Rhinos on Friday night<\/a>, Sky Sports\u2019 Jon Wilkin put it to Nsemba that his Ashes snub was the driver for such fine form, a prompt that the Warriors man accepted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it was good to get a pre-season under my belt,\u201d Nsemba responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, you want to play for your country and play for England but at the same time, if you\u2019re not getting picked, then it just (creates) fire in your belly and you want to get there next time.<\/p>\n

\u201cPre-season has done me well, I\u2019m happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenge Cup reaction, incoming head coach and major signing \u2013 Click here to watch the latest episode of the Serious About Rugby League Show<\/a><\/p>\n

Wigan Warriors back in full flow<\/p>\n

In such strong form through 11 rounds of Super League, Nsemba will have one eye on this year\u2019s World Cup down under in Australia.<\/p>\n

Put to him by Sam Tomkins that \u2018Junior Nsemba will be in the World Cup squad\u2019, the Wigan man said:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve got to back myself, so I\u2019ll accept it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like if I\u2019m doing my little things, keeping my feet moving, getting my carries and my defence right, then that\u2019s probably what the England coach will want. I accept that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also spoke on the poor form the club had displayed but explained that the Warriors are now over their dip.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you said before, we had that patch where we lost four consecutive but now we\u2019re finding our flow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve now come off the back of two good wins and we know what\u2019s there in two weeks so we\u2019ll focus on the league and then we\u2019ve got Wembley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wigan Warriors forward Junior Nsemba has admitted that his 2025 Ashes snub has helped put the fire in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-590038","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\/590038","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=590038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}