Exclusive: Ian Watson hits back as pressure mounts at Huddersfield Giants

Last night Ian Watson’s Huddersfield Giants side were thrashed by Leeds Rhinos 54-0 in a stunning defeat virtually no one saw coming. Afterwards, Watson delivered a very frank press conference.

Here is every word from it…

Performance

Yeah it’s a very difficult one but it is an easy one. Terrible beginning, terrible middle and terrible end from us. Yeah, just no nowhere near, no resilience. No building pressure. Too much defending in the first half.

Just not good enough. Embarrassing to be fair.  I didn’t see it coming mate. I’ll be honest We’ve trained really well the last two weeks and trained hard as well. They labelled it the mini-Grand Final, all the players knew all about that. The occasion was obviously a big occasion for the MND and it was a great occasion for Rob and his family. But we let it all down by a terrible performance, mate, to be fair.

Reaction to defeat

I’ve been here before, I know how to change it, I know what will work and where we need to go from it. It’s a shame it will come to that, but I know where it needs to go and what we want to do.

I just think it’s not going to be nice now. It’s not going to be nice. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be some tough conversations, some honest conversations, but if we need to take the club forward and move it in the right direction, that’s what’s got to happen now.

Speaking to individuals

I’m not going to label that in here. I’ll speak to individuals myself. Maybe some have got a little bit too comfortable. I don’t know. I just like to think that everyone plays the game like it’s going to be the last game and they’re going to commit everything to it.

I didn’t see that out there today, which is really frustrating. It hurts me badly, that. Is that the most disappointing thing, the fact that a lot of people were building up this game and a lot of people could see how important it was.

It looked like we turned up expecting we were going to play a game of touch and pass today, not with a crowd that was on. You could tell the way they built it up before the game. Barry Mac doing his little bit of a stunt with Macy and Maya and getting all the crowd going. It was always going to be a tough game but that’s character, that’s a challenge. It’s a great challenge to come in and attack head on. We were found wanting, mate, as a group we were found wanting.

Questions about his job

Oh, you always do. You always do, mate. Yeah, you always do. You always do. You always question everything. And then you can go back through it, go back through it. I stay strong in my belief that I know where I’ll get the club and I know where I’ll get the team on the back end of that.

I’ve seen things like this before. I’ve had adversity all the way through my career as a player, as a coach. There’s nothing different for me. It’s about responding from there. I have a belief we’ve managed to take two bottom four teams to major finals in the last few years. I know how to get it done. I need to get people that are going to come along on that journey and be the right ones for it. Whether that’s the way the club see it is a different kettle of fish altogether.

I wouldn’t say I’m not worried. You’re always worried when you lose. It’s a job I love and a career I love and I want to be one of the best in it. However far away that looks today, it’s about perseverance, working hard, getting your head down, showing resilience, showing everything that we didn’t show today.

Players’ Futures

I don’t know as far as ripping up contracts, but I think if they if they want to be better they’ve got to show that they want to be better. If we need to look at something different then we need to look at something different.

Are some of the players playing for their futures over the next few weeks? I think everyone is, me included. I think it starts from me. Like I said, I’ve done it before and I feel I left a club that I left before in a really strong position to go forward with the players that I brought in. But they had the mentality that I wanted. We need to make sure that’s in here. I did think we had that group, but for one reason or another there’s a few players who fell way, way off that for this year. Whether it’s too comfortable with me, however, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll have a look at it, mate.

I think sometimes, yeah, you put… I trust people. I put a lot of trust in them to do what they need to do, but at some point as well you’ve kind of got to go away from that and you’ve got to be a little bit ruthless if you’re going to succeed at things. We’ll see. I’ll have another good look at it. I know from live, from watching the game, where there’s certain things that I want to look at and there’ll be certain ones potentially that I’ve brought in. There’s some players that I’ll back to the hilt in there because I believe in them and I trust them.

Justin Holbrook links

I don’t know [if it was unhelpful]. You’d have to ask the players, wouldn’t you? When I seen it or when I heard it, I didn’t actually hear it. I got a phone call saying, have you heard what’s been said on Sky and I said no.

My thing would be Justin’s a great coach I know he’s just been sacked himself but I’d rather think people look at some of the British coaches before they look at the Australian coach he was brought across here and given the best club in the country and the players at the at the pump we’ve not got the players at their pump at the moment we’re trying to build something that doesn’t happen just overnight so we had a great win record over here, but then over there he’s gone over there.

And if you want to say like I’m failing now then he’s probably potentially failed in his job But he’s a great coach from all accounts from what I’ve been told from the people I speak to Speak highly of him. Does it mean he’s a bad coach because it’s not worked out? It just means that that’s that clubs probably not fitted him and then players haven’t fitted him

I know they back me. I know they back me, they’ve been really good with me since I came. I told them all along what the plan was and I told them that it wouldn’t all be nice going along there.

Last year, what we did, we far exceeded anyone’s expectations. If we’re pretty honest about it, we probably got a lot further and higher up the table than we probably expected as a group. Now whether that’s, I think that’s probably hurt us, because everyone expected us to go straight to the top again.

I’d probably say Leeds are probably struggling a little bit with that. They made the Grand Finals when it was never anywhere near that. And then all of a sudden everyone’s expecting them to get back to the Grand Final and maybe win it next year. So I think that level of expectations can weigh down on some people, but I’d like to think you build a team that would accept that as a real challenge and go after it, not shy away from it.

Belief in himself

I’ll win a comp over here. I do. I how mad that seems, and it seems stupid to me right at this moment in time but I do believe it.

Impact of job speculation

I think it does have an impact on you. Because you’re always like thinking, what’s all that about? There’s no smoke without fire. Where’s that come from? You’d love to know the source. It’s either good journalism or it’s bad journalism, whichever way you look at it. But then in sport, coaches, players, it seems like they’re fair game to the approach of anything. Someone walks up to you in your daily life and goes, are you gonna get sacked yet?

It doesn’t really happen that, but there’s plenty of people at the gym who like to come down and find out whether I’m getting sacked or stuff like that. It’s not a good question, and then your wife gets asked it as well, has he been sacked yet? It’s not a normal walk of life, but because you’re a sports person, you’ve got to accept it and it’s got to go with the territory, because if you respond, you’re the bad one.

Conversations with higher ups

I’ve spoke with Richard Thewlis. Ken sent me a message. That’s it, like I say, I know they’ve backed me. They’re good people, mate, and a good club.

Season over?

I just think we stop talking about that. I think we take one game at a time. At the moment, I don’t think we even look at that. It’s pointless looking at that when you tune out a performance like that.