Winder pleased with Isa’s Wigan debut

Wigan assistant coach John Winder was very pleased with the way a young Warriors team handled themselves at the weekend, despite losing 26-20 to Leigh in a pre-season friendly.

Willie Isa made his first appearance in a Wigan shirt, and Winder was pleased with the new signing’s performance.

“Willie started full training at the back end of last week, he trained with the boys this week and he was good to go so we brought him into the squad,” he told the Warriors’ official website.

“He had some limited time, we only played him for 40 minutes, but I think in particular when we moved him to the middle he looked really effective.”

Winder was also impressed with the Wigan youngsters, with 11 out of the 20-man squad having played for the club’s academy side in 2015.

“I thought young Jack Wells did well,” he said.

“He’s only an 18-year-old kid playing in the back-row. The two back-rowers he was playing against in Harrison Hansen and Gareth Hock have got a lot of experience on him but I think he did pretty well.

“Joe Bretherton stood up in his first spell, a couple of the young lads popped their heads up.

“It was a really good hit-out, obviously we were really pleased with the start, we started really well and some of our young lads stood up against a very good Leigh team.

“We played pretty much most of the game with one half in Sam Powell as Nick Gregson got a bang to his knee. We ended up having to put Gabriel Fell there but I thought they all stood up and had a dig which is really important.”