Wolves and Giants fighting to escape Super League bottleneck, claims Agar
Warrington assistant coach Richard Agar believes that his team and their next opponents, Huddersfield, are fighting to climb clear of a ‘bottleneck’ in the Super League table.
The Wolves are currently lying in third place in the table, on eight points. The Giants are one place and two points behind, before there is a clutch of teams on four and five points.
Whoever wins Friday night’s clash between the two teams at the Halliwell Jones Stadium will be able to start putting some clear ground between themselves and their rivals.
“We’re six rounds in, and I think that every team will still be looking at it as a work in progress,” said Agar.
“They’re still striving to find their best football.
“The league at the moment has a real bottle neck. With the results at the weekend, the teams at the bottom, if they got a win, could jump up into fourth, fifth or sixth spot.
“That’s how tight it is, with only a point or two separating a lot of teams.
“Huddersfield had a tough start to the year, and probably tough in that the off-season didn’t see them get on the park too much.
“So the 19-0 in round one against Hull FC in round one might have shocked some people, but I’m sure that the Huddersfield coaching staff could see reasons, in that perhaps they went into that game a little bit cold.
“Since then, with playing football every week, they’ve seen gradual improvements.
“It’s not really affected their confidence too much, to the point that now they’re on the back of three wins, and, I would say, come to our place in better form and with more confidence than they had in the opening couple of rounds.
“So it’s shaping up to be a big game, third versus fourth, and both teams will want to consolidate their spot in the top four with seven games gone.”
Warrington were beaten last week by St Helens, and Agar admitted that the focus for his team in their work this week has been about putting their own performance levels right, rather than looking at the threat posed by the Giants.
“Number one is that we’ve got to get our own performance right,” he said.
“If we don’t get our own performance right it’s irrelevant what the opposition do.
“So we know there’s been some things for us to fix up and build on, and get right a little bit more.
“So we’ve spent some time on that this week. We’ll do due diligence on Huddersfield and have a close look at them, and certainly look at their strengths, and some of the opportunities that we might get this weekend to try and exploit.
“After Saints last week, the slant is more about how we perform this week.”