Ian Watson explains where the game was lost for Huddersfield following shock Magic Weekend result

Josh McAllister
Ian Watson, SWPix.

Picture by Olly Hassell/SWpix.com.

Huddersfield boss Ian Watson believed his side were still in the game at half-time against St Helens with the score at 16-6.

However, the head coach admitted the changing rooms felt flat at the break in what reflected on a poor second half at St James’ Park Magic Weekend.

The Giants went on to lose 48-6 to Paul Wellens’ Saints, conceding nine tries including four for England international and St Helens winger Tommy Makinson.

Watson was critical of his side’s left edge defence that conceded six tries between Makinson and a brace for Tonga international centre Konrad Hurrell. 

Mark Percival and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook also crossing, while Kevin Naiqama opened the scoring in Huddersfield’s only try of the fixture.

Ian Watson explains Magic Weekend defeat

“Personally, I thought the first 10 minutes we looked in control. 

“I think first half, the scoreline kind of flattened them a little bit to be fair. I think the sin-binning to Luke Yates enable them to get to 16-6. 

“But I still felt at half-time that we were still in a game.

“But the tries seemed to take more out of us than what we thought. I thought the changing rooms were quite flat [at half time].

“We came out second half and the first defensive set was good, but then we got shutdown coming out of yardage and all of a sudden the momentum just went completely.

“They just played on the front foot on the back end of that and just picked us off too easily on our ledge edge and our defence which was way off.

“The most disappointing thing today was kind of how poor our left edge was defensively. You can say they’ve got some great players and they executed very, very well and smart by them.

“But we weren’t good enough in that area and we basically spent the rest of the second half doing a lot of defending.”

Huddersfield boss confident in top six spot

The defeat marked Huddersfield’s eighth of the season in 13 games, leaving them outside of the play-offs in ninth spot with only Hull, Castleford and Wakefield below.

Despite their slow start to the year, Watson insists he still believes his side will make the all-important play-offs at the end of the season.

“I’m fine with our group. I knew there was going to be a sticky period because of some stuff that we faced,” Watson said.

“Hopefully we’re coming through that now and we should see something different.

“I thought the Castleford one [game] was back to more our identity. But it wasn’t out there again today and it was nowhere near that level it needed to be as well.”

Meanwhile, Watson confirmed that Joe Greenwood failed his head injury assessment after a nasty head knock. 

“He’s split badly and he’s got a bad concussion,” Watson confirmed.

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