{"id":653545,"date":"2026-06-23T07:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/653545\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T07:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T07:04:12","slug":"warrington-wolves-set-for-season-defining-run-as-sky-pundits-assess-crucial-five-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/653545\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrington Wolves set for season-defining run as Sky pundits assess \u2018crucial\u2019 five weeks"},"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

Warrington Wolves tasted just their third defeat of the Super League campaign last Thursday but it\u2019s come ahead of what is a \u2018crucial five weeks\u2019 in the eyes of pundit Jon Wilkin, who has argued that this upcoming slate of games could well dictate if Wire are true contenders or not.<\/p>\n

Having beaten St Helens on the road in round 14, Warrington welcomed Leeds Rhinos full of confidence but they were dispatched with relative ease as Brad Arthur\u2019s side won 34-6<\/a> to complete a season double over Sam Burgess\u2019 side and prevent them from going top of Super League.<\/p>\n

Wire still have a game in hand but their points difference is substantially worse than the Rhinos and that could yet worsen over the coming five weeks, with Warrington set for a gauntlet of tough fixtures.<\/p>\n

Their next five see them host Catalans, face Leigh at Magic Weekend, travel to Wigan, host Hull KR, and then face the Leopards again but on the road, with Sky Sports\u2019 pundits Jon Wilkin and Sam Tomkins explaining that how Wire deal with those fixtures will ultimately define their year.<\/p>\n

Speaking just after the loss to Leeds, Wilkin said:\u00a0\u201cI think it\u2019s a difficult part of the season but if you want to be a champion team, if you want to finish in the top three, which is crucial as we all know, if you want to get to the Grand Final, if you want to go on and win it, the race for the top three is cooking now.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Warrington in particular, the next five weeks are crucial. They\u2019ve come out okay (so far), 50-50, beat St Helens, lost here, but the next five now become really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Super League standards slipping, Leeds\u2019 latest signing, and the big England squad debate \u00a0\u2013 Click here to watch the latest episode of the Serious About Rugby League Show<\/a><\/p>\n

Warrington Wolves facing \u2018opportunity\u2019 to define their year in gauntlet of games<\/p>\n

So poor were Warrington and so good were Leeds on Thursday night that the Wolves\u2019 head coach Sam Burgess admitted that he was happy the score remained 34<\/a>, and didn\u2019t blow out further, with Jon Wilkin pointing to that as a sign of just how aware Burgess is of points difference playing a part in this year\u2019s Super League race.<\/p>\n

Wilkin said: \u201cSam was pleased the score didn\u2019t get away from him. He knows Leeds have got the capability to blow out to 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s almost pleased it stayed at that level. That\u2019s his awareness of the points difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Tomkins picked up on something different, noting: \u201cHe said, look, we\u2019ll learn a lot from tonight, and I think this next run of fixtures is still an opportunity for Warrington to cement themselves because they won\u2019t play as poor as that, I don\u2019t think, again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that could have been the shot they needed. Next week they play Catalans. They can probably right a few wrongs there. Then they go into a real tough run of games where they\u2019re going to be 50-50, potentially underdogs. The opportunity\u2019s still there for this to define Warrington season in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A win over Catalans at home would set them up nicely for Magic Weekend against Leigh, however, a second straight home defeat could start the process of Warrington\u2019s season being derailed, particularly given how tough the following four fixtures are.<\/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":"Warrington Wolves tasted just their third defeat of the Super League campaign last Thursday but it\u2019s come ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-653545","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\/653545","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=653545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}