Adrian Lam: I was never worried about my job, Wigan put faith in me

Drew Darbyshire 13 Sep 2019 10:40 AM

Wigan coach Adrian Lam has praised the club’s hierarchy for believing in him when they were doing it tough earlier in the year.

The Warriors secured second spot in Super League and home advantage in the play-offs on Thursday as they eased past Castleford 26-8 at the DW Stadium.

Wigan sat seventh in the table at Magic Weekend back in May but have since gone on to win 12 games out of 13.

Lam commented: “I’ve learned a lot about myself as a coach this year. When were going through tough times, I had the support of Kris [Radlinski, executive director] and Ian [Lenagan, chairman].

“Rather than making a panic decision like Leeds did [in sacking Dave Furner], I thought Wigan were really supportive of me and that just gave me the confidence to believe in the philosophy that we wanted to play.

“I’m friends with Dave [Furner, ex-Leeds coach] and at the time he got sacked, I thought ‘oh wow’. I knew I was always okay and I knew I only had 12 months [on my contract], so it wasn’t going to matter regardless of what happened.

“For us at Wigan, we lost [Ryan] Sutton, [John] Bateman and [Sam] Tomkins – three senior players – and Liam Farrell and Sean O’Loughlin haven’t played 14 games this year, so it was always going to take time to change but I didn’t expect it to take as long as it did. I always had the support of the hierarchy though.”