“He’s been outstanding since he came here” – Watson waxes lyrical about gamechanger

Ian Watson’s Huddersfield managed to overcome a severely depleted Castleford at the Jungle, but the Giants boss had massive praise for one of his stars in particular.

Nathan Peats only joined Huddersfield in July from Leigh, but the number nine has taken to the claret and gold like a duck to water.

And, Watson could not have been more happy with the hooker’s performance.

“Nathan Peats has been outstanding since he came here – you can see why he played State of Origin,” Watson said.

“He’s really helping Will Pryce and Oliver Russell and his talk with the team in attack and defence gives us a real composure.

“I’d rate him right up there with the best nines in any of my teams, he is that good.”

Watson was unhappy with his side’s sloppiness in the second-half, but enthused about the first-half display, with the Giants going into the break 20-6 up.

“I thought the first-half we were good, we controlled the field position really well.

“Second-half I felt it went error for error for both teams and it got really scrappy.

“The guys said the ball was sweaty as well but just simple skill like knock-ons brought simple pressure onto us.”

The Huddersfield boss knows his side have his work cut out to make the play-offs, but he is adamant they will not give up after back-to-back victories.

“We’re taking it one game at at time, but we want to be in a play-off position.

“The disruptions we’ve had throughout the year, we feel this group has been really good the past few weeks and given us some positivity.

“We’re building in a nice way, we had eight homegrown players playing tonight with ten under-21s playing and that bodes really well going forward as a club and a team.”