Cunningham anticipating fired-up Wildcats on Friday night

St Helens coach Keiron Cunningham is expecting a different Wakefield side when his team travel to Yorkshire on Friday evening.

The Wildcats were mauled by Widnes at the weekend, losing 58-16 at the Select Security Stadium.

Cunningham is anticipating a positive reaction to that thrashing from Trinity coach James Webster‘s men, however.

“Wakefield are a good side and the coach is doing a good job with them,” he said.

“He’s getting them playing a lot of rugby and throwing the ball about.

“They’ve got a lot of attacking threat across the park.

“It’s going to be a big test for the players to go to Wakefield and do a job.

“I think they’ll respond very well off the back of the defeat to Widnes, because that wasn’t the team that we’ve seen in round one and round two.

“It was a different animal, and I’m sure we’ll see a different performance than we did at the weekend.”

St Helens have looked strong in defence this season, something which pleases Cunningham, though he wants current efforts to be maintained.

“We’re happy, it’s something that we’re working really hard on,” he said.

“We worked a lot in preseason, and we’ve worked a lot early on in the early season on our defensive structures and our attacking structures.

“We do look like a well-coached team at times. When you watch us defensively you can see that the hard work is paying off.

“The biggest thing is consistency. We’ve got to keep that going every week, and stick to those same principles.”

St Helens will be without the suspended Travis Burns and Kyle Amor for the game on Friday.

Cunningham believes that there is enough depth in his squad to cope with the absence of two key men, however.

“We’ve got a good squad, we’re quite healthy,” he said.

“Everybody’s more or less injury free. So I’ll have plenty to choose from.

“Young Andre Savelio’s been in decent form, he can always drop back in.

“You could go through all the juniors and fringe players who could drop in there.

“Josh Jones can drop into the pack as well, so it doesn’t concern me too much.

“In the halves I’ve got plenty of options. We’ve got Paul Wellens, and Jordan Turner we can bring into the halves, if we wanted to, or Lance Hoihaia.

“There’s a few options.”