Watching The Footy Show on Thursday and they were interviewing one of the NRL players (sorry, his name escapes me), and they were discussing how all the NRL teams employ wrestling coaches to aid in tackling technique. Just wondering if any SL teams do the same? Replies including the words Big Daddy, Kendo Nagasaki or Les Kellet will be ignored!

I know that in the nineties that the club did have sessions with judo coaches and other martial arts to help with grapple techniques. I don't know if they still do.

Some players attempted tackling efforts do seem to be more like John Cena's Five Knuckle Shuffle.

Wrestling has been part of the Pies training regime for years and very good they are at it too, although it adds nothing to the game as a spectacle.

Interesting listening to Wigan scrum-half Matty Smith on GMR earlier in the season. One of the Warrington players had been on talking about how they don't do very much specific wrestling training, to which Smith's reply was, "If Warrington don't do very much wrestling training then I don't know what they do with their time, as at Wigan we do it every day!"

Wrestling is clearly intrinsic to the Wigan culture, as can be seen from Shaun Wane's recent comments about bringing Joel Tomkins back in to Super League "i can't wait to get him in the wrestling pit etc". The culture at Warrington seems to be distinct from this. Wigan prefer a rigid structure in attack and dominating the wrestle in defence. Warrington prefer a more open attacking structure with players encouraged to make offloads and take risks, and wrestling is clearly not as much of a feature in defence. It's basically good vs evil from a rugby league purists point of view...

I wonder if that will change at Warrington next season?

Warrington have a wrestling mat in the gym at Padgate HQ