Wigan Today caught up with Wigan Warriors star Bevan French following his first start since his return from injury
Bevan French believes there is still more to come from himself after making his first start in more than three months, with the Wigan Warriors star continuing to build his match sharpness following his lengthy injury lay-off.
The Australian halfback returned from a hamstring injury at the end of May, making three appearances from the bench before playing the full 80 minutes in Saturday’s hard-fought 20-16 victory over Hull FC.
French produced two assists at the MKM Stadium and also had a spectacular effort ruled out by the video referee.
Reflecting on his first start since returning, the 30-year-old admitted it was a challenging afternoon but felt physically stronger than expected.
“It was a tough one,” French told Wigan Today. “It was a bit of a shock, because we’d dropped so much ball, we did a lot more defending than we should have, and that made it tougher, I guess, so it was a tough 80 minutes, but I didn’t feel too bad.
“To be honest, it felt easier (on my fitness) than last week (in the win over York Knights), just because I think there was so much stoppage in the game, it was quite a slow game, to be honest.
“Obviously, there were drink breaks across 80, but with the amount of stoppages that were in the game, there were breaks in-between, so I didn’t feel too bad, but we’ll see how the first one goes without any breaks and stuff.”
French admitted the Warriors were far from their best against Hull but believes the character they showed to grind out the victory was a positive.
“It was a bit of a frustrating one,” he said.
“Reviewing it character-wise, we can take a lot of positives out of it. Obviously we’ll look at the basic fundamentals and all the mistakes that we made, but I don’t think too many other squads would come away with the win to be honest after something like that, two people going down early and our completion rate was pretty pathetic to be honest, so to put all that into perspective and still come away with the win, character-wise it was very good, but we’ll look at all the rusty stuff in the week.”
He added: “It was just finding different ways to win. Obviously we’ve been really good with the ball and scoring a lot of points, and I guess playing pretty footy, but today was like a win of just rolling your sleeves up and getting through all the boring stuff and doing the tough yards.
“We’ll take a positive out of it that way, getting a win in a different way. But the rest of the stuff, the basic fundamentals, weren’t up to our standards, but we can take some positives out of it.”
French also saw the funny side after a superb second-half effort was ruled out because Hull fullback Logan Moy had batted the ball back into play, with his foot being in touch.
“I wasn’t gutted that I didn’t score, I was just gutted that I ran all that way for nothing!” he joked. “He could have put his flag up at the start, and I wouldn’t have done that!
“We were lucky enough to score in the next set anyway, which took a bit of sting out of it, but that was the toughest part, running all the way down there and then getting knocked back!”
Next up for French and the Warriors is a derby clash with St Helens on Sunday at Magic Weekend, which takes centre stage at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium.
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