PLAYING matches with no fans in attendance is going to be a new experience for Super League players and Warrington Wolves’ Ben Currie is eager that the team compensate for their loss.

The first taste of this new environment for The Wire will come on Saturday, August 8, when they return from more than four months of a coronavirus-enforced suspension to play Super League Round 8 against Hull Kingston Rovers at Headingley Stadium.

“We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” said the 26-year-old England back rower.

“In the past we’ve done a lot of training games with different teams, such as Widnes Vikings and Leigh Centurions.

“We’ve done 13 v 13 training and I guess it’s going to be quite similar to that because with no atmosphere you’re going to be able to hear the calls from the other team, hear your own calls, hear the contact, every little bit of it.

“So it’s definitely going to be different. With no fans, you’ve got to look at creating your own energy and your own buzz about the place because you have no fans to do it for you.”

Since returning to training last week the focus has been on preparing the players’ bodies for the vigours of battle again.

But next week will bring about a focus on the first match.

Hull KR, coached by ex-Wolves boss Tony Smith, should have been playing Toronto Wolfpack this weekend but due to the Canadian side’s withdrawal from the rest of the 2020 season it means their meeting with The Wire will also be their first outing since March too.

“They won’t have been able to blow the cobwebs away against Toronto,” said Currie.

“But after the lockdown we’ve all had, you just don’t know what to expect with regards to who’s fit and what team they will put out.

“It will be difficult to review Hull KR but obviously we know how Tony Smith likes his teams to play.

“Hopefully we can turn up, not start off slowly, and be ok.”

Losing Toronto Wolfpack has been a blow to the competition, and the results of their matches in the opening rounds have been expunged from the record - which has led to Warrington dropping two places down the league table to sixth.

“It’s a shame to lose them. The majority of our boys have not been over there. I would have loved to have played them away and have the experience. Hopefully we can do it next year,” said Currie, an everpresent for Wolves at the start of the year.

“Some of our boys are friendly with people that play for Toronto. There’s quite a few ex-players from here. Fingers crossed they’re still getting their payments and they can still survive. It’s a shame they can’t finish the year off.

“The blank weekend that we now have will be good for our players, from that point of view, due to the amount of games we’ve got coming. It’ll be good to get a break but it’s a shame it’s come down to losing a team to get that.”

Currie said the work in training has been tough but enjoyable.

“We’ve only had two weeks of pre-season before the week leading into the first game, so we don’t have as long as we usually would with a ‘pre-season’ so we’ve probably tried to cram quite a bit into the time,” he explained.

“We do a lot of skill games which are conditioning as well. So, we might have 11 attackers against six defenders, so the six defenders are constantly moving and that’s more game-related fitness.

“That’s probably the better conditioning for us and a lot of teams will be doing that.

“There’s not going to be many easy days to come, but they’re good days.”