Familiarity could breed contentment for Agar and Wildcats

Agar, who is combining his full-time job at Wakefield with a part-time role with France, made a flying visit to the south of France last Saturday to check out training venues ahead of the 2013 World Cup.

He also took in the Dragons’ Super League home game against Huddersfield Giants to cast his eye over the bulk of the squad he will call on for the World Cup, although he admits it was a double-edged mission.

“I try to catch most of their games nearly every week, with one eye on what’s going to happen at the end of the year,” said Agar. “But I’m sat on the other side of the fence this week.

“As much as I’m looking at the people sticking their hands up by showing their strengths, I’m trying to pick out one or two little weaknesses as well.”

One player putting his hand up for the national team is exciting full-back Morgan Escare, who has seized the opportunity presented to him through injury to Brent Webb by producing a series of eye-catching performances for the Dragons over the last two months.

“I know they’ve got one or two injury problems, but I think the positives they’ll take out of that is the emergence and the form at the moment of one or two of the younger French players,” added Agar.

“Some of the less heralded players are playing particularly well for them.”

Agar is hoping today’s game can ignite his side’s play-off ambitions.

They are currently languishing in 10th place, with just four wins and a draw from their first 12 matches, but that is an improvement on their start to last season, when the Wildcats went on a positive surge in the second half of the year to reach the play-offs.

“We’re a bit ahead of where we were last year,” said Agar.

“We can’t go banking on getting seven wins on the trot again because it’s rare a club like Wakefield achieves a feat like that.

“Of course, we’re aiming for it, but we’re very realistic. Consistency over an extended period of time is probably more achievable for us this time around.”

All four of Wakefield’s wins have come against teams outside the top eight and Agar admits they need to start picking up points against some of the more highly-fancied teams, like the Dragons, to whom they lost narrowly 29-22 in Perpignan only two months ago.

“We’ve pushed a few close and getting over the line, particularly in some home games, is going to be important from this point,” he said.

“Catalan away and Huddersfield at home were particularly close games. Being able to take a couple of scalps at home is going to be important and this would undoubtedly be one.

“We took a lot of positives from the game in Perpignan. We were hanging on for the last 16 or 17 minutes because we struggled with rotation and we got pipped in the last three or four minutes. We know what a tough proposition they are.”

Agar is able to recall Australian prop Justin Poore, who was rested for last Friday’s win at Widnes, while the Dragons have lost another of their key players in Jason Baitieri, who will undergo major knee surgery next week which could rule him out of Agar’s World Cup plans.