Tony Smith: Warrington ready for tougher campaign
Tony Smith revealed the aim of Warrington’s training camp in Sydney was as much to give players an experience of a lifetime as getting them battle-hardened for another Super League season.
Part of the trip included facing Michael Maguire’s South Sydney Rabbitohs, a game the Wolves boss told Code13 he knew how to prepare for.
“[They played] Wigan style – very similar. They were good,” he said. “It was interesting to play against a team in different colours that play in a similar sort of way. We sort of half expected it and knew what was coming, but they were very good at it as well.”
The Warrington squad also linked-up with Souths for a training session, which brought them back into contact with Matt King, one of only three to depart from the Halliwell Jones Stadium at the end of last term,
“They were very welcoming to us and so was Michael Maguire. He was very generous in his time and we trained with Souths as well. We had a great experience,” he added.
“It was a good competitive game. We shot out to a 24-0 lead and then they pegged us back. It was a good exercise for us and it was a good exercise for the players to play against an NRL team.
There were some experiences that the players had out there which were possibly once in a lifetime, and that will live with them for the rest of their careers.”
Back in Warrington, the Halliwell Jones stadium has undergone construction work to fill two corners in and increase the capacity. Smith thinks the prospect of bigger attendances can lift his players on home soil.
“I think it will create an even better atmosphere,” he added. I think it’s already a pretty good atmosphere, and I agree that we are well supported – we do have a great support. It’s a great atmosphere at the Halliwell Jones and I think they handle themselves pretty well as a crowd.
“We’re pretty proud of them. Not only are they at our place, but they follow us and travel away. They’re one of the better travelling support in the competition, if not the best, so we love having them there and they’ll get right behind us. The good thing is that they get behind us win, lose or draw, and that’s a real positive for our club.”
Warrington are amongst the bookies’ favourites to win the 15th Grand Final on October 6th, but Smith insists this isn’t an area the Wolves are focusing on yet.
“I think anyone who is thinking about the back end of the season has got the wrong ideas,” he said.
“We’ve got to start again like everybody else – we all start on the same points. You’ve got to earn the right to get up there and if we can do that and get some consistency in our performances, then we’ll be pleased. We always try to set out to improve from our previous season and when we do that, we’re pleased, but we’ve got to start all over again.”
Smith was critical of the level of competitiveness in some of his side’s games in 2011. They notched 50 points in 9 of the 27 weekly rounds, and scored over 1,000 points in total, a feat which had not been managed since 2005. Despite such an impressive record, he is still looking at ways to improve on last season.
“You can always improve on a weekly basis and we need to be a bit more consistent in some areas,” he explained.
“I think we’re going to have some tougher tests this year, I think the competition should be a lot stronger and we can test ourselves on a weekly basis rather than every few weeks.
“We also want to bring through some of our young guys, so we may well have some different issues to what we have had in the past. We’ll assess those as they go and look for that consistency on a weekly basis. Hopefully we’ll have tougher games each week which will help us. That will be a positive thing.”
