We don’t have London in the cup, well we don’t yet. We play London the week after the CC 6th round.

I know the guy who warms the balls for the bag so the correct teams get matched up. It’s London

Catalans have had so many changes that they could be anywhere this year and it wouldn't surprise me if you won that. The two home games are absolute walkovers, so you could be 3 from 3 and on a Burgess-inspired high. It could then come crashing down at Hull KR. However if you lose the Catalans game, the over-excitement won't kick in and your response will start week 2 with the two easy games, tempered expectations and you going under the radar a little.

Starting with a long run of victories would be the worst possible thing. Last year Powell worked hard to put everything into hitting the ground running (maybe to save his job, who knows?), but history has shown that the early pace-setters usually don't end up winning the big one. And with a club like Warrington with all the hype that gets churned out, we always get complacent when it counts.

I'd rather build into this year slowly with some hard fought games and peak when it counts. Consistent in defence but steadily improving in attack. This is what happened in Price's first year and it worked with a much poorer squad. I just Burgess hope is a better motivator than Price, which he should be. Got to give him the season to know whether he's making a difference.

Make every post a winning one like Saints did.

We have had plenty of years where we have got off to a poop start and we're no better off for it at the end of the season.

Recently (say post-2013) I can only really think of 2017 as being a year where we looked really rubbish in the first 6 games and never recovered. 2022 we sort of looked off our game, but somehow got those 3 wins before it all went Pete Tong.

Either way, I'd rather not have another 2023-style start with the players then dropping off. We'll know soon enough.

Wigan in 2023 got off to a slow start, losing 2 of the opening 6 games. They hit 1st place in April 2023, then had a slump for a month mid May-Mid June falling to 6th. Then they won 11 our of 12 to finish the season in first place.

If we can win 75% of our games (3 out of 4) we will win the LLS.

If we only win 50% of our games (2 out of 4) we will make the playoffs, win 3 games on the bounce at the end and we win the SL title. It's really as simple as that.

Believe it or not in 2023 we were just 6 wins from the LLS.

Instead we lost these 6 games, which I consider winnable.

Wakefield (A)
Salford (A)
Hull FC (Magic)
Castleford (A)
Leeds (H)
Catalan (H)


*I have no idea why any of our players in our squad should feel any hype and be over confident at all. The long termers have an established track record of being pretty average performance wise, and downright weak mentally . I remember Philbin remarking in the WG "perhaps we have underachieved during my time" - no Sherlock - 1 pot out of a possible 20 during his stint. Maybe if we linked testimonials with performance, and not longevity, we would see a different result.

So when do we play Penrith behind closed doors? For some reason I assumed this would be a run out for us before playing Cats, but obviously this can’t be the case. Are we playing them mid-next week without full contact?

So, 6th game against Cats after the cup, and potentially could be top of the league.

Thoughts on Burgess so far? Anyone [inot[/i surprised?

If you listened to media talk, it would sound like we're 0 from 4, rather than 4 from 5, we're quietly flying under the radar, and I'm alright with that for now

Top of the league now.
Unfortunately we’ve a long wait before we can test ourselves against the Pies.

Good solid start for Wire and signs of green shoots of recovery. We are not title contenders but looking at the league I am confident we should make a play off place.

Not getting giddy, but happy with what I’ve seen so far, which is basically the team progressing and youngsters being given a chance.

As Wires71 pointed out above if we had beaten the "weaker" teams we would have been league leaders.

That's my expectations of a season we beat the teams we are supposed to beat and we put in the effort in the "big" teams games giving us a chance to win.

That's the beauty/beast of the GF format you don't have to be the best/most consistently best to win just win the big games.

I think play offs is the minimum expectation each season and we should always have a team and coaching staff able to win it.