Today’s meeting, at Leigh Sports Village, kick-off 5.30pm, will be the fifth between the sides this year.
Sam Burgess’ side are winning 3-1, thanks to coming out on top in the Super League fixture at The Halliwell Jones Stadium, the Challenge Cup quarter-final at home, and the pre-season friendly.
But their last get-together, a month ago, during Magic Weekend at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium, went Leigh’s way.
Warrington will be aiming to turn that around and gather some momentum on the back of returning to winning ways against another play-off rival, Hull KR, at the weekend.
Another win for Leigh, though, would put them level on points with The Wire as the battle for top-six positions hots up.
“We didn’t give the best of ourselves last time we met Leigh,” said Wolves head coach Burgess.
“They’ve got some strike players and they’re on a decent run of form.
“For us, we’ve really focused on ourselves.
“There’s not a great deal to look at them, we’ve played them three or four times, including the trial match.
“We know what their team looks like and what their traits are.
“For us, it’s about getting our game in better order than the last time we played them.
“We only played them a month ago (July 4), so not a lot really changes too much apart from personnel in both sides.
“I think both teams will be similar structure.
“We’ll be completely different looking to when we played them last time.
“We were patched up a little bit then, so we’ll be a little bit more like ourselves on Saturday.”
Warrington’s backline will certainly look different to the one fielded in the Magic encounter.
That day, Ewan Irwin was at full-back, Lachlan Webster was on the wing, Albert Hopoate was in the centres, Josh Smith played on the left instead of the usual right-side, Marc Sneyd was in the halves – none of which is to be expected this time around.
Sam Powell is serving the last game of a three-match suspension and Max Wood is on loan at Hull FC, so there will be at least two changes on the bench as well.
“We started really cold that day, we didn’t get out of our half for about 15 minutes.
“Sammy got sin-binned.
“It just didn’t really go our way, it was a frustrating game in a lot of ways and a lot of it was our doing,” said Burgess.
“We’ve been trying to build a better game the past fortnight.
“I thought parts of our game were really poor at the weekend, so we’ve got plenty to work on.
“We’re not making it about anyone else, more so about us and our progression through the year.
“Last week was an important game for sure, because we’d had a couple of losses.
“I felt the week before (against Wigan) we were miles better energy but our execution was off a bit in crucial moments.
“We started the game well enough and we did the same against Hull KR but we did it for longer periods which gets a result.
“It’ll be another great challenge for us on Saturday to get our game in better shape and for longer periods.”
