Ian Watson slams ‘soft’ performance as he explains why Huddersfield Giants were beaten by Castleford Tigers

Huddersfield Giants went down 26-18 to Castleford Tigers tonight at the Jungle.

The Tigers went up 26-6 early in the second-half before Chris McQueen and Will Pryce crossed for consolation scores with barely minutes left.

But, Huddersfield were by far second best with Castleford outenthusing the Giants in defence and causing a number of problems in attack.

The Tigers couldn’t have started any better, weathering a great Huddersfield storm before scoring 14 points in ten minutes.

Derrell Olpherts notched his second try shortly after before Jermaine McGillvary got an important try just before the break as the Tigers led 20-6 at half-time.

Jake Mamo crossed after half-time to make it 26-6 with Chris McQueen getting a consolation score with three minutes left to make it 26-12 before Will Pryce made the game look closer than what it should have been.

The only downsides to the Castleford win was two yellow cards to Paul McShane and Kenny Edwards.

And, Giants head coach Ian Watson was bitterly disappointed with his side’s performance.

“We just weren’t at the races,” Watson said on Sky Sports after the game.

“We’ve had the break and we’v come back a little bit soft – we didn’t play well last week but we won last week.

“We turned up soft defensively and I thought Cas defended really well and showed us how we should defend.”

Watson was also keen to express that Huddersfield need to learn the lessons from this disappointing defeat.

“We lacked a lot of composure, we weren’t patient with the ball and our execution was way off.

“If you turn up like that and you don’t want to defend then you’re going to be on the back of a hiding – it’s no consolation for the way we played.

“We’ve been on a good run and it’s about us learning those lessons.”