Jon Wilkin slams ‘rank’ Warrington Wolves but offers Sam Burgess defence

Sky Sports pundit Jon Wilkin has described Warrington Wolves’ Super League season as ‘rank’, but feels the blame should fall on the players and not head coach Sam Burgess. 

The Wire’s already slim play-off hopes were all but dashed emphatically tonight as they fell to a 25-12 defeat to Salford Red Devils at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.

That defeat now leaves Sam Burgess’ side five points adrift of sixth-placed Hull FC with just three games to go in the regular season.

‘It’s been a rank year’

This defeat in isolation is tough for Warrington to take, given the current situation at Salford, but it marks a low point of a rotten run of form. Warrington have lost four of their last five matches in the league, with this now their second consecutive loss to a side below them in the table following their loss to Huddersfield Giants last weekend.

It marks a truely sour note to what has already been a tough league season, which left former St Helens man Wilkin to describe them as ‘a broken team’.

“I watched Warrington capitulate last week and that’s a broken team,” he said on Sky Sports. “It was defeatist capitulation. What we’ve seen there is a spirited performance from Salford.

“But it’s been a rank year, hasn’t it,” he added. “Three of our pundits said they’d win the competition. Three of our team thought they’d win it.
You could not have seen Warrington not being in the top six. It was unthinkable.

“We were talking about who wouldn’t finish in there at one stage and we said Leigh – and how ridiculous does that look now. When you think of how abhorrent Warrington have been all year.”

With Warrington likely to miss out on a spot in the top six, and their current form as well, it leaves boss Burgess under pressure, but Wilkin feels the blame should fall on the players rather than the coach.

“Sam made a great point post-match last week about how do you motivate your team, and he said ‘that’s not my job’. These are professional people. And I get that,” Wilkin said. 

“There also has to be some pressure on the individuals who went out to deliver. We often pin it on the coach and maybe Sam hasn’t had a great year himself but his players have let him down.”

Warrington do still have a slim chance of reaching the top six, but will need to win all three of their final league games and hope results elsewhere fall in their favour. They also have an incredibly tough run-in too, with Leigh Leopards, Hull FC and Hull KR all on the horizon.

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