Huddersfield Giants head over to Wakefield Trinity on Friday night for Super League Round One.
Many have written off Wakefield, but Huddersfield boss Ian Watson has had a much more positive say about Trinity:
“You look at their spine in Mason Lino and Lee Gaskell, who we know is a talented player so we need to be aware of them. They’ve got good players across the park, look at Proctor and what he brings to a club. I think at the moment they’re still in a transitional period.”
Meanwhile, he also explained why Kevin Naiqama will miss the game:
“Kev Naiqama will come out, he’s got a little bit of a groin that tightened up on his first kick chase of the game last week. His kick chase game was outstanding last week but he felt something in his groin, there’s nothing major there. It’s early in the season so we need to make sure he’s right going forward and when you’ve got somebody like Jake Bibby who was won League Leaders Shields and been in Grand Finals, it’s a pretty straight forward swap for us.”
The game is going ahead despite fears of cancellation.
In the eyes of Watson, it is vitally important that the game went ahead because they missed Round One:
“What we don’t want to be doing is looking up the table, that’s one reason we wanted the game on. We didn’t want to be sat looking up the table on one game with zero points whilst everyone else has played three games and is getting a little more battle hardened, and us being even more undercooked potentially. It’s important we get two points on the ladder and start pulling some teams back, it’s only early days but it’s important you get off to a win at some point.”