SAINTS coach Paul Wellens is wary of the threat that Warrington will pose in Sunday’s Challenge Cup quarter-final.

The Saints face local rivals the Wolves in a mouth-watering cup tie that sees hooker Daryl Clark come up against his former club for the first time in the red V.

Wellens’ men go into the fixture off the back of an intense month, which has seen them take two trips to Leeds, go through the emotion and effort of a Good Friday derby win against Wigan and then a trip to France last week.

The Saints boss says he is pleased overall with how the team have fared over the testing period, despite the loss in Perpignan last Saturday.

“Generally, I’m very pleased with the team, the approach they’ve had in the last month,” he said.

“We’re all, the players, myself, we’re all disappointed with the result in Catalans, we felt we didn’t quite get a number of things right which led to the result not being favourable.

“However, what I can’t fault in the playing group is their effort and their application over that month.

“We’ve had four very tough games, very intense games, and all players have handled that really well, apart from the Catalans game where we dropped our standards slightly.”

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Wellens praised the way Warrington have started 2024 under new coach Sam Burgess, their only defeats so far this year both being by Catalans.

Asked about the threat they pose, Wellens said: “First and foremost is that competitiveness across the board which I think every good team needs to be successful.

“Within that, they have got some key individual threats, young Danny Walker at nine is an excellent player who can hurt you. Obviously Matt Dufty out the back and players like George Williams who have been around the game for such a long time, he’s a really threatening and dangerous player that needs to be kept a close eye on. There’s many more I can talk about as well, they’re a good side, good players and I think it’s a really mouth-watering tie.”     

Wellens added: “They look like a really unified group, they’re working hard for each other.

“I think quite often a team represents what the coach is. Sam was one of those no-nonsense approach-type players, very hard-working, very disciplined and I think you see that in his team now and you have to add on to that some bits of quality.

“They’ve certainly got that as well with many strike players who can hurt you so we’re going to have a tough challenge on the weekend if we want to progress to the next round.

“At the same time we’ve got a lot of confidence in ourselves.”