WIGAN WARRIORS may have one hand on the League Leaders’ Shield but coach Matt Peet believes there’s still aspects for his side to work on ahead of the play-offs.
Only Catalans Dragons now stand between the Warriors and their second silverware of the season – having beaten Hull KR to the Challenge Cup in May – after last Saturday’s outstanding 40-8 win at Leeds Rhinos.
But whilst the prospect of lifting another trophy will undoubtedly be in the back of his players’ minds, Peet conceded: “In an ideal world, from a coach’s point of view, what’s at stake shouldn’t really matter.
“We should want to perform, we should be concentrating on improving as a team.
“If we do that – whether it’s this week, last week, the week after, you’d anticipate that you’d give yourself a really good chance.”
The head coach was particularly impressed with Wigan’s character to soak up pressure from Leeds, whose only points came from a converted Ash Handley try and Jake Connor penalty-goal.
“You’re never going to get perfection for 80 minutes,” stressed Peet.
“When Leeds did take the upper hand, I thought our reaction to that was really good.
“That is important, how you handle those periods of pressure, and it was somewhere that we looked very connected and looked like we were enjoying that.
“That gives me confidence going into the back end of the year because there will be more periods when things go against us, particularly this week, and it’s about how you endure them.”
Catalans travel to The Brick Community Stadium hoping to spoil the party and send the retiring Ben Garcia and Tommy Makinson out on a high, and he expects the Perpignan side to go out all guns blazing in their bid to cause an upset.
“We’ve got to expect the best of them,” admitted Peet, whose side triumphed 40-16 against the Dragons in Paris in June.
“They’ll be coming into their last game of the season and they’re going to give it everything they’ve got.
“We’re preparing for them to come and play the best that they have all season, and we want to play our best.
“We’ve got areas that we need to improve and we want to work on as well, so I’m looking forward to it.
“There’s no doubt that this time of the year, and probably for the last five or six weeks, that we felt like if we were to make a fight of the League Leaders’, they were all games that we needed to win.
“This is the last part of that little part of the season, so we want to do ourselves proud.”