Congratulations to world champions Wigan Warriors

20 February 2017

UCLan applauds its official Super League partner

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is offering congratulations to its official partner and now world champions Wigan Warriors following the club’s success over NRL champions Cronulla Sharks in the Dacia World Club Challenge.

A hat trick from Joe Burgess helped the Warriors to a 22 - 6 victory over Cronulla at the DW Stadium, giving them a record fourth World Club Challenge win.

UCLan is the ‘official university’ of Wigan Warriors.  It has been working with the club to help it prepare for the game against Cronulla and the new season with intensive pre-season fitness tests to measure each player’s individual performance.

Speaking at UCLan last November when the first team squad visited the University, Director of Performance at Wigan Mark Bitcon said: “We’re hitting pre-season as Super League Champions which gives us a different approach as the World Club Challenge game against the Cronulla Sharks is at the front of all the players’ minds."

"I want to offer congratulations to Wigan on behalf of the whole University. UCLan has enjoyed working with the Warriors for a number of years now and it’s a privilege to support the players and see them progress to such a high standard."

“All of the players know that Vo2 Max testing is the gold standard of physical capability and they have really pushed themselves during their visit to UCLan.  We’re very lucky that we now have eight years’ worth of accurate data from our visits to UCLan to work with, which puts us in a really strong position and helps us develop individual pre-season training programmes for each player.”

Dr Adrian Ibbetson, Head of the School of Sport and Wellbeing at UCLan, said: “I want to offer congratulations to Wigan on behalf of the whole University.  UCLan has enjoyed working with the Warriors for a number of years now and it’s a privilege to support the players and see them progress to such a high standard.  It’s fantastic to see Wigan crowned world champions as well as Super League champions and I’m sure this result will set the tone for the rest of the season.”

UCLan also supports Wigan with video analysis support, strength and conditioning training and several University degree places for its staff.  This relationship also provides vital experience for UCLan students, with sports science final year undergraduate and postgraduate students performing all pre-season fitness tests under supervision from their tutors.  Students on other sports related courses have also worked in strength and conditioning support, performance analysis and taken management and sports journalism placements with the club.