Huddersfield Giants head coach Ian Watson has said his team will need to be on their best form to beat London Broncos this weekend.
The Broncos have had a tough start to life back in Super League, and currently find themselves bottom of the table and winless after five games. This might be bleak reading for Broncos fans, they have already faced four of last season’s top six, and were just one minute away from beating Hull FC at the MKM.
In London’s showings against Catalans, Warrington, Wigan and St Helens, Watson saw enough to make him know his team can’t come into the game at 50%.
“There are no easy games in the Super League,” he told the media ahead of the game. “I think every week comes down to your attitude and the way you’re going to approach the game. You want everybody to be 100% in every week, ready, prepared the right way and taking every game seriously.”
He added: “The one thing we know is they’ll come with enthusiasm and they’ll be ready to play and compete. They do test you, their attack is very good and they like to throw the ball about, they like to push it if you like and flick it out the back pocket.
“We’ve got to be on our game to make sure that we defend really well.”
Ian Watson on potential Huddersfield Giants squad rotation
Ian Watson – Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com – 10/09/2022
Huddersfield travel down to the Capital in mixed form themselves, but as mentioned above the Londoners have lost six on the bounce.
Whilst their losing run might leave Watson thinking he can rotate the team a bit, past experiences last season mean he’s keen to keep his full-string team together again this weekend.
“We played Hull FC last year when they’d lost 7 on the bounce,” he said. “We were performing pretty well until that game, but we went there half-cooked and didn’t do our job, so that’s a little bit of a warning for us this week to make sure that we’re doing everything right.”
He added: “I’ve not thought about tweaking the team, we’re trying to build our consistency, trying to build our processes and the continuity between each other as individuals more so than anything else.”
Despite him refuting the idea of widespread changes, there will a couple of ‘enforced’ changes to his team this week: “There’s a couple of changes (to the squad). We’ve had a couple of things that have slightly set us back a little bit in terms of naming the same team; but the majority of it will be a similar team”
He added these ‘setbacks’ aren’t long-term though: “Not long term, probably a week issue more than anything else.”
