Huddersfield Giants coach Ian Watson confirms Matty English injury blow in Wigan Warriors defeat

Huddersfield Giants coach Ian Watson has confirmed they will be without prop Matty English for next Friday’s trip to Castleford Tigers.

English suffered a nasty looking concussion in the second half of Huddersfield’s 30-16 defeat to Wigan at the DW Stadium when making a tackle on Warriors debutant Tiaki Chan.

The England Knights international was notably dazed, with both Wigan and Huddersfield supporters clapping the Giants forward as he left the pitch.

Speaking in his press conference after the game, Watson said that his front-rower didn’t undergo a head injury assessment due to the severity of the collision.

He said: “I’ve not spoken to him yet, I know he was with the doctors when I came out so I’ll speak to him (soon) and find out how he is but it didn’t look good because they ruled him out as soon as it was done.

“The doctors are with him now, basically, they ruled him out straight away and said he’s not coming back.

“Our doctors are really good and he ruled him out straight away so you can probably count him out for the next 12 days (based) on that.”

With the 12-day return to play concussion protocol in place, that means English will miss next Friday’s trip to Castleford. He would also need to pass his return to play protocol in order to return in Round 5 against Hull KR, which is a fortnight away.

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Huddersfield Giants boss Ian Watson on mixed performance at Wigan Warriors

Watson had mixed feeling over his side’s performance on Friday night, being 18-4 behind at the break before going down to a 30-16 loss to the world champions.

“I thought there was a lot of grit and determination from us, especially defensively,” Watson said.

“At the start of the game we kind of let that get us, there were 19 sets in the first 20 minutes and they had 14 or 15 of them which kind of tells you the story.. If you are going to keep defending that many sets back-to-back, you’re going to concede points and Wigan are too good of a team to give an 18 point start to.

“But I thought the way we responded from that, especially with Adam Milner being sin-binned as well, I thought we showed really good character and then we started to show a bit more of us when we started to complete sets and went set for set with them, and then we posted points on the back of it which we obviously turned into a decent game on the back end of it, but probably our errors and skill kind of let us down coming out of yardage which put it beyond us.”

Huddersfield, who have won one from three so far, travel to the Mend-A-Hose Jungle to face Castleford next Friday night in Round 4.

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