Wane offers warm welcome to Catalan
Wigan coach Shaun Wane is looking forward to welcoming Catalan Dragons to the DW Stadium the next time the two teams meet.
The Warriors won their clash with the Dragons 37-16 in a fiery clash, which saw several French players receive disciplinary charges.
Particularly gruesome was Vincent Duport‘s choke ‘tackle’ on Wigan winger Josh Charnley.
Wane has now implied that the French outfit can expect a stormy encounter the next time they travel across the Channel to face Wigan.
“I thought the referee did really well,” he said.
“One thing I would like Catalan to know, is that hopefully we’ll get them in the play-offs, and I’d lok forward to welcoming Olivier Elima and his team to our place.
“And we’d really enjoy getting them down to our place, whether next year or in the play-offs they can be assured of a good welcome from us.”
The way in which some of the hardened Catalan pack seem to pick on Wigan’s young players particularly annoyed Wane.
Nevertheless, he felt that his players did themselves credit with the way that they handled the situation.
“That’s one thing that did disappoint me, but I thought that the way we didn’t get dragged into that sort of cheap shot mentality was a credit to our players,” he added.
“I thoguht we were really professional in the way we went about it. What they do as a team is out of our control, but we stayed with the task right to the end.
“We just stayed really professional, defended tough and played tough.
“And just went about our business, I thought some of the tries we scored were outstanding tries, some of them individual,
“After that first 20 minute period after that, our completion rate was very, very good.
“They put us under the pump with very aggressive defence, I was really pleased how we stayed with the task of completing our sets, knowing that they come up with errors.”
“I thought we went about our business in a really good manner.
“Catalan do make defensive errors, and we exploited that.
“It was an enjoyable win, because of the pressure. When you consider we’re still without Micky McIlhorum, Ben Flower, Gil Dudson, Blake Green and Iain Thornley – all starting first teamers – we’re in good shape going into the last few games of the season.”