There has been a lot of pressure on a number of coaches this season.
One of them is Ian Watson. Despite being one of the best coaches in the league, the high expectations on the Huddersfield Giants and their losing run has upped the pressure on Watson but it doesn’t bother Watson who is strong in his conviction as he looks to take the Giants forward.
“Well, you’re aware of it because people tell you I don’t I don’t read it. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve had it before,” Watson said.
“I remember at Salford one time when I was told, we got to fourth in the league and we got to semi-final of the Challenge Cup one year, then in 2018 we had a really up and down season and went up in the middle eights year after that we started out and well that year in the middle way through the season we started out we got back to what we were about and then the year after we got to a Grand Final so I’ve seen it before, the big thing is just to stay kind of focused on your on your task and a belief in what you’re doing and that’s not weighing from us in any shreds of imagination.
“Everyone knows that the processes we have are the right things to be doing. At this moment in time we’re just not winning and we just need to turn that into our favor.
“I imagine that experience with Salford’s helping you out in this in this current situation. Yeah it’s been worse than this mate. It’s been worse than this and then it’s kind of come through. You learn a hell of a lot. You learn about yourself. You learn about things that you’ve done wrong. And you learn about things that your team has done right and wrong as well.
“There’s no one that can ever say in a situation like that they’ve not done things wrong. I’ll put my hand up and say there’s certain things that I’ve done wrong. But there’ll be things where the players will put their hand up and say I’ve done that wrong. So it’s like I say, it’s about learning from them and being better going forward. If you’re willing to learn, then you’ll improve. If you’re not willing to learn, then you’ll just fail at it.
“I know the board were fully behind the kind of the idea of what we wanted to build. I was pretty clear when I first came in that it’s not about miracles.
“If anything, probably last year jumped probably a year or two forward in terms of the level of expectation of what we had for the group. The first year we wanted to come in and kind of learn what the group was about and see where we needed to improve and see what the issues were.
“We weren’t brought in because there was no issues, we were brought in because there was an issue. So, then you’ve got to then, second year, then it’s kind of try and fix it up and improve on that. I think we did that in abundance, probably too well, so then all of a sudden the level of expectations gone absolutely skyrocketing through the roof and we’ve probably got caught up in that as coaches, as players, as a club.”
