WIGAN boss Stuart Raper has urged Warriors fans not to desert the club after their inauspicious start to the season.

While the Challenge Cup holders have brushed aside amateurs Halton Simms Cross and Northern Ford Premiership outfit Doncaster Dragons in defence of their crown, defeat to Castleford and a narrow victory over relegation favourites Huddersfield have raised serious doubts over their credentials as Super League contenders.

Raper has publicly fumed over his team's lack of form and apparent inability to retain control of a game for the whole 80 minutes.

But he insists performances will improve as the season rolls on.

"We are very concerned over the way we are playing at the moment. I have some question marks over what we have been doing in the past few weeks," he said.

"It's more a state of mind that we are in at times. We just take our foot off the gas and that invariably means we concede tries.

"But competitions are never won in the first few weeks of the season and I hope the supporters can stick with us.

"Every side is going to have peaks and troughs throughout the season and I just hope the supporters aren't too disappointed that we aren't beating teams by more.

"If they keep coming out to support us, they're going to see some great performances."

An opening fixture list of Halton, Castleford, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Swinton, Wakefield and London is hardly punishing and Wigan must find an antidote to their problems soon or face being shot down by a succession of big guns over the following weeks.

But Raper cannot wait for the daunting run of 'four-pointers' against Hull, St Helens, Leeds and Bradford, which kick off next month, claiming the quality of opposition will bring the best out of his charges.

"It has been a really strange start to the season. We had Simms Cross and Doncaster between Super League matches and there's just no consistency of opponents there," he said.

"We need to be playing good teams back to back. It's that consistency that will help us.

"St Helens have had a similar cup run but at least they had played Sydney Roosters and Bradford Bulls. That really helped them and now we could do with a few hard games to get us going."