DOES IT MATTY TO YOU?

[josie andrews]

The Time Has Come

03/02/2015 12:07:03

Hi guys,

How are you all doing? Hope you've had a good break and are ready for the season to start.

We're training hard ahead of the Widnes game and I'm looking to get over the disappointment of the friendly against Saints. We obviously wanted to do well and win and put some kind of good performance in two weeks before the season starts, but it just didn't work out that way.

I think we probably struggled a bit in the pack, not having the experience of Lockers, Mossop and Ben Flower.
The young kids do well when they come in and step up, but the experience of Saints' pack just got the better of us on the day.

Leading up to the game - with what happened in the Grand Final and losing in the way we did - meant the build up was definitely a Saints-Wigan game and you never struggle to get yourself up for those ones. It was a bit fiery, but we just let ourselves down with the skill on the day. The hunger was there and the aggression in defence, but we just lacked a bit of skill on the back of it.

We missed a hell of a lot of opportunities to score, whereas they took theirs. The loss is disappointing, but to get that kick up the arse in preseason is probably what we needed.

As an individual, I look at my performance and I was scratchy in some areas and I need to be better leading into the season. We've been training hard and we've picked up a bit, so hopefully that will lead into a great start against Widnes.

It was good for me and George Williams to start together in a game that felt so competitive, because obviously the more games we play the better we're going to be.

I love playing with George. He's a different kind of player to me, he's more off-the-cuff, a flair player, he can score something out of nothing. I'm more of an organiser, with where I kick and I try to steer the team around best I can. We compliment each other really well. I don't think a lot of people know this, but last year, George played more games than Greeny did, so we did get a lot of chances to play together, and we won most of those games.

The partnership will take time, but I'm excited about it and I know he is. He's a great kid, he wants to do well. It's all there for it to work. It's brilliant how we've got so many great young backs at the club. Ryan Hampshire has done really well lately and Sam Powell had a great game against Workington, especially as he's just coming back from injury.

On Sunday, I went to the Super League launch event as stand-in captain for Lockers - we have to give him Sundays off these days!

Any time you get to captain a team like Wigan - in games or at events like this - is an absolute honour and I really enjoyed it. It was a great day and I've never seen anything like that before, there was so much press and different things going on and the things they did later on with Rugby League Rocks were incredible - Dan Sarginson and Josh Charnley have been going on about it all day and it sounded outstanding.

It's a great way to start and, as a player, when you see that trophy and the Challenge Cup as well, you realise the season is about to start and that's what you're playing for at the end of it.

We're kicking things off on Thursday against Widnes, so we've trained on Sunday and we're all just dying to get out there. Pre-season is so hard at Wigan, when you're running up those sand dunes and doing army camps, it's non-stop and you're thinking 'what is this all for?' But now we've got a game, everyone's fit and we're really looking forward to the start of the year.

Speak to you soon,

Matty

http://www.wiganwarriors.com/WBlogp.aspx?id=26