BURGESS Q&A: Ashton, building consistency and leaving Wembley in the future

Yahoo

16-05-2025

THE semi-final celebrations have died down and now, it's back to the weekly grind for Warrington Wolves.
With a Challenge Cup Final date with Hull KR now looming large on the horizon, minds may naturally wander towards that big occasion next month.
However, head coach Sam Burgess insists there are no thoughts of Wembley just yet with three important Super League matches to play before then, starting with Sunday's trip to Wakefield Trinity.
The Wire boss sat down with the Warrington Guardian's Wire reporter Matt Turner to discuss the days and weeks ahead, and he also gave more detail about the cruel, season-ending blow for star winger Matty Ashton.
Here is everything asked and answered in our exclusive Q&A…
MT: I guess given the awful news surrounding Matty Ashton's injury, the first question has to be simply 'how is he?'
SB: It's a really tragic injury for him and he's obviously upset about his position, so we've given him some time off to get himself away to the sun.
We're all absolutely gutted for Matty and I think most rugby league fans are.
He brings a lot to the game and is really exciting to watch. Since I've been working with him, I feel his game's been brilliant.
He's cemented himself as one of the international wingers and I think we were all looking forward to seeing him have a go against the Aussies.
One thing with Matty is he'll find a way to be positive about it and learn something when the time comes, but we can't hide the fact we're all gutted for him.
We'll move on as a group and we'll get over it as we've got some great players to come in, but we're all gutted.
Matty Ashton will miss the remainder of 2025 having damaged the ACL and MCL in his knee (Image: Olly Hassell/SWpix.com)
MT: When did it actually happen, the injury?
SB: He did it in the fifth minute, when he held Darnell McIntosh up over the line.
It was such an unfortunate injury – it was a contest in the air and he landed on his leg.
MT: Did it shock you to discover the full extent of what he'd done because it looked like he was getting ready to come back on?
SB: We were all shocked – we initially thought it was a medial and that would have been a couple of weeks.
Then he was saying there was some clicking in his knee, which is never a good sign.
He was going to come on for the last 20 minutes when Josh Thewlis got injured – he kept telling me he was ready to go back on but I just had a feeling he wasn't great.
That said, I didn't have a clue it would be as bad as it was.
Ashton suffered his injury following this aerial contest with Darnell McIntosh, which ended with him holding the Leigh winger up over the try line (Image: Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com)
MT: You'll obviously have a group of players in there who will be desperate to play at Wembley, but that's three weeks away.
With that in mind, is your message that there's places in the team out there to be grabbed in these next few weeks?
SB: As we've seen, a lot can change on the spot.
We're not even worrying about Wembley just yet – we're trying to get our best team on the field at Wakefield, get a good performance in and then we'll re-assess again.
With the way it's been going for us, we're touching a bit of wood every week and then re-assessing to go again.
Wembley is three games away and I don't really want to think about it yet because the team will be different by then, just based on circumstance.
We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
MT: How do you assess where you sit in Super League at the moment as you pick up the season again?
Being ninth obviously won't have been part of the plan but looking at the table, it's still very open?
SB: I'm not too worried about where we sit – I'm looking at our performances.
We're not hiding from the fact we haven't been as consistent as we'd like but we've identified a couple of things to have a look at that we think has played a part in that.
What we're starting to see now is some more consistent performances in terms of markers that we look for.
Although we had a couple of losses leading into the semi, we really felt our game was moving in the right direction.
We've struggled with inconsistency in the team but we've enjoyed the challenge and have figured out different ways to play.
No doubt once we start stringing a few games together and a bit of momentum comes our way, the ball will bounce our way soon enough.
We understand that it's a long year and nothing is won or lost at this time of year in the league.
MT: You lost to Wakefield in Round Four but a lot of water has gone under the bridge between now and then.
How do you assess how they've built their season since then?
SB: They've been great and have been exciting to watch.
They really test out your defensive line so we've got to be on our game, there's no doubt about it.
We're looking forward to the challenge again because they did beat us here and were the far better side on the day.
We'll have our work cut out.
Wakefield beat Warrington 30-16 at The Halliwell Jones Stadium in Round Four (Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)