Wigan Warriors’ Liam Byrne is excited for his first Challenge Cup final this weekend, as the prop and the club as a whole look to show their recent progress.
Byrne emerged as a regular for Wigan last season, playing 25 times as a young side struggled for much of the year and finished without success.
This year the 22-year-old has gone from strength to strength, playing every game bar one – even that was evidence of his first-choice status, being among the players rested against cup final opponents Huddersfield Giants two weeks ago – and leading from the front.
The team are on an upward curve too, winning twelve of their first 16 matches under new head coach Matty Peet with a chance to lift silverware in the next one on Saturday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
“I felt like it was my time to kick on this year, to get in the team as much as I can and do as much as I can for the team,” said Ireland international Byrne.
“We’re doing okay. There’s plenty to work on and plenty to work on in my game as well. As a team we’re making good steps and I think it shows by being able to go into a cup final this week, how far we’ve come in the past couple of years.
“There’s been a lot of changes in pre-season, particularly a big change in the culture and making sure we get our culture right.
“Just the amount of chats we had as a team, and how open and honest we were with each other, was massive and maybe something we’ve not done enough of.
“There’s a big change with the community as well, trying to get the community involved as much as possible and making us tight-knit with the town.
“I think we’ve taken that energy into the season.”
The team that Wigan take into the Challenge Cup final will be a mixture of experienced figures who have won multiple titles at the club, and younger players like Byrne who will be getting their first taste of such an occasion.
“We’ve had chats in training with senior lads and with other lads that have won it elsewhere,” said Byrne.
“We got together as a group and reflected on how it feels to do it and what it means to them.
“Us young lads who will be out there took a lot from listening to them and what it means to them. We all want to win it for each other.
“There’s a lot of pressure around the game, with the big stage. I think all the lads will be feeling it and all the lads are looking forward to it.
“I’m really looking forward to it. There’s some nerves there but I think that’s normal. I’m just looking to use that energy as best I can.”
The Warriors handled the semi-final stage very well indeed, producing a tremendous performance to knock out the Challenge Cup holders and their great rivals, St Helens.
That was the greatest achievement of the Warriors’ campaign to date and Byrne says they need to keep hitting that standard, both this week to earn the club their 20th Challenge Cup crown, and into the future.
He said: “It was massive to beat Saints, and I think that’s the first time I’ve done it so it was massive for me.
“It just shows how far we’ve come that we can do that. That’s the mark now that we need to be at.
“Saints have been the best for a good few years now and that’s where we need to be, we need to be competing right up there and trying to win as many of those big games as we can.
“Hopefully we can do it again this week and get our hands on some silverware.”