Wigan Warriors: Bevan French says Challenge Cup ‘hurt’ will fuel motivation for rest of season
Bevan French in action for Wigan Warriors
Wigan Warriors star Bevan French says they will use their Challenge Cup semi-final defeat as extra motivation to have a strong ending to the season.
Matt Peet’s side suffered an agonising golden point defeat to Hull KR in the Challenge Cup semi-finals last weekend – but responded brilliantly with an impressive 44-18 win over Leigh on Saturday.
French admitted the semi-final defeat ‘hurt’ – but says it will fuel their motivation as Super League enters the business end of the season.
“It hurt (semi-final defeat), but I think we used that in the right way,” French told Channel 4 after their emphatic win over Leigh.
“(It was) very disappointing, but now that’s out of the way, I think we use that as motivation now and we can focus purely on the back end of the season.
“We had a good meeting about that at the start of the week about how much that hurt and how much we’ve got to turn things around now.
“There are seven games to go now, so I think all the boys are really looking forward to that and as long as we come in with the right attitude everyday and willingness to learn and improve every week, hopefully we can keep doing that and have a good end to the year.”
‘We need to keep on improving’ – Wigan Warriors boss Matt Peet
The Warriors are currently sitting second in the Super League table with seven games of the regular season to go, but Peet believes his side must keep improving as the race for the play-offs heats up.
“It’s a distraction (Challenge Cup) that you want, I wish we was going (to the final) and I wish we had that problem to deal with but the fact is we don’t,” Peet said on Channel 4 after their win over Leigh.
“It does narrow your focus and makes you a bit more single minded in how you train and prepare and how you select your team, but it’s quite simple for us now: we’ve got to keep improving.
“At the moment we’re a good team but I think to get what we want at the end of the year, we have got some improvements to make.”
On those improvements, Peet explained: “Not conceding soft tries like that at the end, 18 points is too many, the best teams wouldn’t let that in and no matter what team we have out that’s not really acceptable.
“Bevan touched on the yardage errors, I think when we get in the right areas of the field we’ve got threat but defensively we need to improve.”