Liam Farrell says Wigan Warriors will need their best performance of the season to overcome St Helens in the Challenge Cup semi-finals.
Farrell has played in more than his fair share of big games through the years, including being a two-time cup winner with the Warriors.
The experienced back-row will lead Wigan out on Saturday in the absence of club skipper Thomas Leuluai and he revealed what his key points will be approaching the game.
“Start the game well,” he said firstly. “That doesn’t mean putting points on the board straight away, it means making sure we’re strong defensively, we’re aggressive, we’re keeping hold of the ball and completing sets, and taking opportunities when they come.
“And we don’t want to play one-out rugby against a Saints team who will fly out to whack you, we need to make sure we’re in shape and play.
“We’re coming up against Saints who have been the dominant team for the last few years, so we know we’re going to have to perform. We’re probably going to have to give the best performance we’ve given all year to win.
“Defensively there’s a couple of things we can fix up. Attack-wise, I think we’ve shown a lot of threats and we’ve got some players who can cause trouble.”
Farrell believes that Wigan are continuing to improve with each passing week and hopes that shows against their local rivals, who ran out 22-4 winners in the Good Friday derby between the sides only three weeks ago.
“We’ve improved over the ten rounds we’ve had so far,” he said. “We’ve tried to narrow our focus on improving each week, and definitely since the Saints game we’ve improved.
‘You don’t want to look into Good Friday games too much, they’re intense and emotion plays a bit part as well.
‘But we’ve learned a few things we can fix up, and there are things we will try and improve for Saturday to help us win the game.”
