Smith targeting skills improvement for Wigan

Wigan scrum-half Matty Smith has revealed that improving their quality in attack is a priority for the Warriors at the moment.

Shaun Wane’s team returned to winning ways last Friday, beating Hull 13-12. Smith believes that the scoreline could have been more impressive if the Warriors had properly clicked in attack.

“The start was massive against Hull and I think that was down to our defence,” Smith wrote in his regular blog on his club’s official website.

“The line speed was great, our contact was good and our third man was a lot better. To be honest, I think we missed a few opportunities and we could have easily been up by 20 or 30 points by half-time.

“We tried something a little bit different with our shape, we knew our attack had to sharpen up a bit on the back of the Cas game.

“Maybe we were just trying to get used to that, but a couple of times, if the pass had been better or the skill had been better, we could have put some more points on the board.

“But that’s good, they’re little things and things we can improve on. Our skill is one area that we’ve really looked at in training and on video and it’s something we massively need to improve on this week.”

Smith also revealed just how hard the players had had to work in the wake of the humiliating defeat by Castleford a week earlier.

“Coming off the back of the Cas game, we were in the morning after at 7am,” he explained.

“We had to watch the game all the way through and that was painful. We were in again on Sunday in the wrestling pit, working on the little things and on the defensive side we worked really hard all week.”