However, he admitted his side struggled to live with an increase in intensity from the visiting side in the game’s later stages, when they stretched into a decisive advantage.

The Wire were 8-6 up at half time and 12-10 up with 30 minutes remaining, but Wigan then ran in three unanswered tries to all but seal the game.

Jake Thewlis’ late score failed to set up a grandstand finish and after the game, Burgess again highlighted concentration issues within his playing group as being costly.

Here is everything Burgess said post-match…

Q: That felt like a similar story to last week in that this was a game you were in but couldn’t quite sustain?

SB: That’s probably a fair summary, yeah.

Q: What’s stopping you from sustaining these performances for 80 minutes, then?

SB: There’s areas in the game where our concentration doesn’t seem to be there, and I’m talking just a split second.

There’s so much effort there but sometimes at this level, effort isn’t always good enough. You need to be thinking for the whole game.

They’re a great side with some great players and they took some moments. I thought we had a good hold on them but they turned it up and we struggled.

They turned it up in the last 20 minutes and we couldn’t stay with them.

Q: Was the extra physicality they showed in that kind of period the difference then, do you think?

SB: I don’t know about that – I thought we handled them quite well as they’re a physical side.

We had our moments too but it’s moreso making our tackles, keeping hold of the ball – really simple stuff.

We bombed a couple in the first half which you really can’t do against Wigan.

Q: Will you reflect on that then in terms of going in ahead but probably thinking you should have been further ahead?

SB: We were at 65 per cent in both halves – we’re just not being clinical enough.

There’s so much effort out there from so many guys but there’s a couple that need to switch on a bit harder.

Q: Is that something you can coach?

SB: I’m trying as that’s my job.

You can certainly see we’re looking more like ourselves but there’s a couple of transitions that I and the team value that aren’t quite where they need to be which we’ll have to catch up in time.

We’ve got things to work on and we’ll be better again next week, but we’ve come up against two great sides and we’ve been second-best.

Q: The talk on Sky before the game was about this being the “last chance saloon” for you guys in terms of the top six so is that it now?

SB: I stopped listening to those guys.

Q: At the very least its made it much tougher, though?

SB: It is tough – let’s be honest about the situation and we know it’s a tough climb from here.

I’m not going to change anything I’m doing – I’m coaching hard at our performance regardless of the scenarios. I want to see a team that looks more like us.

We’ve found our way back to it in some areas but we’ve got to be a bit more clinical and I’d ask for a little more concentration from some guys in some areas.

Q: What positives do you take from this?

SB: In periods, I thought we controlled the game well. When we stuck to our plan and executed what we were doing, we looked dangerous.

Defensively, we looked better in a few things we were poor on last week but still, there’s areas we can improve and work on.

There were good little patches all over and I thought George (Williams) tried his backside off in his 100th game for the club.

Him, Danny, Sneyd and Sam are connecting better together so there’s lots of positives to take, but some lessons as well.