Huddersfield boss Ian Watson on milestone man and ‘outstanding’ Leigh

Huddersfield coach Ian Watson has spoken highly of prop Matty English, who will make his 100th appearance for the club against Leigh on Friday night.

English will make his 100th appearance for Huddersfield when the Giants take on Leigh at the John Smith’s Stadium on Friday night.

When asked about English ahead of his milestone appearance, Watson said: “You probably no what I’m going to say: effort and enthusiasm. His attitude is first class all the time.

“We’ve just presented him with his jersey this morning. We got Andy Kelly (rugby manager and head of youth) to do it. Andy has been at the club since Matty signed, so he’s been here for all of his 100 games, so we thought it would be a nice touch for Andy, who helped bring him through, to present that to him.

“Matty is really proud to play for Huddersfield and we’re in a good position that we’ve got people like Matty English, Olly Wilson and (Harry) Rushton tied down to contracts going forward because they are the guys we need to build the team around.

“These are young players who are learning their way in the game and what it takes to play at Super League level at a level of consistency.

“You look at those players and although they’ve got massive potential, it’s about fulfilling that and that’s where they sit at this moment in time. They’re good players and it makes our squad stronger, but they aren’t at the peak of their powers by any stretch of the imagination just yet.”

Huddersfield boss Ian Watson praises ‘outstanding’ Leigh

The Giants boss spoke highly of Friday’s opponents Leigh, saying they’ve been outstanding so far, having won six from 11 games upon their return to Super League.

Watson said: “I think they’ve been outstanding, the way they went about it last year to get in to Super League and sign quite a lot of older established Super League players and some of the NRL players that they already had there.

“For me, they’ve probably got four of the best players in Super League at the moment if you look at Lachlan Lam, John Asiata, Zak Hardaker, Ricky Leutele – there’s other players as well that you can pick out that have come on and done really well.

“They’ve got a high quality team so we need to be well aware of what their strengths are, which we are. We’ve done all our homework on them this week and it is going to be about how we play.

“We speak about this all the time, the Hull KR game we started really well and won the arm wrestle but then made some decisions that didn’t go for us in that game.

“When things go against you, you’ve got to be resilient enough to get back to it and start again. Last week we didn’t do that, we started to chase things and that’s what we’ve had a chat about this week, about being more patient and sticking to the process and the game plan.”

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