ON SUNDAY I was very disappointed with our performance against Swinton, and the players were even more unhappy.

But it is always possible to turn a bad situation to your advantage and on Monday night the players analysed the match video, looking at their own performances and the overall performance of the team. They came to exactly the same conclusions as me - and started to work on putting them right.

After seeing them pull things together in training I am convinced that if we played them again this week, with the same team, the result would be very different.

I have already said it a few times, but it is worth remembering that we are going through a learning process at the moment, and we will get better every week. We will be bringing in more players and the others will be improving all the time.

IT WAS great to see so many Cougar fans at Bury, although it wasn't a game they will want to remember it will give everyone a baseline to measure our improvement against.

AND what about this weekend - it will be the biggest match of the short careers of many of our young players.

Wigan are odds-on favourites to win the Super League in my book and they will certainly be a big test of the ability of our players.

We are under no pressure at all, because nobody expects us to win - but we can dream.

Each player will be testing themselves against their opposite numbers on the Wigan side.

But the one thing they will need is a lot of support from the Cougar fans to help them through the afternoon.

Every time I have been asked about the game it has been very hard to be realistic without sounding defeatist, but the match can be even more important to us that a straight win or a defeat.

It is a big opportunity for them to learn from the best, and if they do that the game will have served a very important purpose.

WE ARE still working away behind the scenes to bring a number of new players to the club.

Johnnie Walker is back and trialist Kirk Johnson, from Wales, has got a job in the area and is looking forward to developing his rugby skills. There are areas which need working on, but if he can show the devastating turn of speed which brought his try against Saddleworth he could make a very useful member of the squad.

We have also been approached by one or two Australians and we are involved in talks with them at the moment.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.