Adrian Lam: Wigan will continue to struggle with poor defence
Wigan coach Adrian Lam insists his side need to bring back their defence that won them the Super League Grand Final last season.
The Warriors performed a late comeback to snatch a 30-26 victory against Salford Red Devils at the AJ Bell Stadium on Easter Monday.
But Lam wasn’t happy with their goal line defence, which leaked a couple of tries through the middle.
He said: “I’m going to lose my hair within the next couple of weeks!
“It’s frustrating because if we continue to do that [concede goal line tries] we’ll continue to struggle. When we get to the point – Wigan won a Grand Final on the back of their defence – and we will get there at some stage. If we score eight or 12 points we should win from there.
“We’re aware of it; the cohesion of the team plays a big part of that, there are different players in different positions and hopefully in the next four weeks we’ll see some players coming back bit by bit.
“It’s an area we’ve tried to address on several occasions. We play Castleford and we led by 20 against them – we’re continuously talking about it, but at least it wasn’t the wrong end of the result.”
Morgan Escare started the game at full-back, while Zak Hardaker played in the centres, where he scored the match-winning try.
Lam added: “It’s always been in my mind as an option at some stage.
“But Zak is defensively as good as any full-back in the competition and it’s been hard to move him. I wanted to give Morgan a run with fresh legs, and Zak scored the try in the centre position, so maybe it was a bit of fate.
“Another 18-year-old made his debut in Amir [Bourouh], we presented his jersey in the dressing room with his mum there and I thought he was outstanding given his lack of experience.
“We’ve got a lot of young players in there and not much experience and we lost that period when we didn’t have experience on there, so we had to get them on there to steady the ship and a bit of brilliance from George [Williams] and Zak got us over the line.”
Lam confirmed winger Tom Davies will miss the rest of the season after suffering an ankle dislocation and break in their Good Friday defeat to St Helens.
Prop Romain Navarrete will also miss a couple of weeks with a knee injury, but hooker Sam Powell will return from suspension to face Castleford on Saturday.