Ratchford on being named Warrington Wolves captain and the ex-Wigan man who will help him

Stefan Ratchford has been confirmed as the new Warrington Wolves captain as he enters his 12th season with the club.

The versatile star joined the club back in 2012 and has played both at Old Trafford and Wembley in the Primrose and Blue.

A Harry Sunderland Award winner with the Wolves in 2018, he is still determined to get the Wolves back to the top after a tough 2022 and a big part of that will be the new signings at the club.

“They’ve all come and settled really well, we’ve had a big turnover in players and it can be difficult at times but they’ve all come in and settled well. Fair play to the Aussie lads that have come over, they were over nice and early from pretty much day one. They’re all settled in and looking forward to challenging themselves in Super League,” Ratchford said of the new recruits.

The Wolves are also determined to improve their defence after scoring enough points per game to win most of them: “We’ve looked back and reviewed that, scoring nearly 21 points a game is more than enough to win  a game but we’ve let ourselves down defensively. We’ve still got the same mindset of wanting to score points and seeing if we can score 21 points but obviously sort our defence out then it should put us in good stead for next year.”

He also said that the Wolves put themselves under too much pressure in 2022: “Hopefully we’ll have the same discipline but the problem last year was that we were putting ourselves under way too much pressure with the amount of defence we had to do, and in the end it caught up with us in games. We put ourselves in good positions but having to make so many tackles hopefully this year we’ll cut down and have more possession.”

So as he looks to change things in 2023, he will act as the club’s leader.

On being named as skipper, he said: “First of all it’s a massive honour to be named captain, it’s a role I’ve kind of done before. The majority of last season I did it with jack Hughes out injured but to be officially named as captain it’s one I’m really proud about but we’ve got a lot of lads in the room that are great leaders. Obviously George was captaining England at the World Cup, then you’ve got Peter Mata’utia, Josh McGuire, Paul Vaughan, Daryl Clarke there’s many who will help me out on that side of it.”