Thursday morning’s fixture reveal came with a shock for Huddersfield Giants as it was revealed that Ian Watson’s side had seven away games in their first nine, something that the head coach has expressed his confusion at.
Watson’s side had a tough season in 2023 following an impressive campaign the season prior that had seen them finish third in Super League and as runners-up in the Challenge Cup.
Heading into 2024 they’re a team who have made plenty of changes to their squad, in particular the spine with NRL imports Thomas Deakin and Adam Clune set to feature at hooker and in the halves respectively.
Watson has now spoken with BBC West Yorkshire Sport explaining the necessity for pre-season to get all the new signings integrated into the squad so that his squad can combat their ‘interesting start’.
“We know we’ve got an interesting start, so we want to make sure that everyone is on the same page,” Watson stated before bemoaning the schedule.
“We’ve looked at every other team’s fixtures this morning and there’s no other team who have got seven away games in the first nine.
“I don’t know what that’s all about. I know it would impact some clubs before where I’ve been but I don’t know how you run a business off that. It’s really interesting how we’ve only got two home games in that period.”
On top of the strange start that sees all those away trips Watson also questioned the return of the loop fixture, something that IMG had suggested they would be aiming to remove – a proposition that Watson would surely appreciate.
He explained: “I’m not a big fan of the loop fixtures anyway, because some teams can be playing three games against London, while some teams are playing three games against St Helens.
“What I’d like is everyone home and away. You’d love to have all home and away games. Whereas this fixture list, what we’ve got, I mean, I think we play Saints twice and maybe somebody else twice before we play some teams once, which is strange for me.
“You’d like to play everybody once, then maybe have the loops and then play everybody again after that. We’re going to have to deal with it anyway. But it’s an interesting set of fixtures for us.”
The Giants boss was also asked about the updated Magic Weekend with the event having changed location from St James Park in Newcastle to Elland Road in Leeds, something that he confirmed caught him by surprise explaining: “I didn’t expect it to be fair.”
Despite the surprise Watson opted to look at the positives, stating: “It’ll be an interesting one because Newcastle is such a big stadium and so with Leeds hopefully we can fill it out both days then. We’ve been averaging 30 odd thousand at Newcastle, hopefully both days the stadium can be absolutely full to capacity and it can be a great occasion.
“Maybe that’s why they’ve looked at something like Elland Road but yeah it’s interesting.”
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