Broncos let us get away with one, admits Huddersfield boss

HUDDERSFIELD coach Ian Watson admitted his team should have been punished for a poor first-half display at London Broncos before coming back to claim victory.

The visitors fell behind early to a converted try from Oliver Leyland as the home side sought what would have been their first win since being promoted from the Championship last season. But following a bright start, Huddersfield’s superiority quickly began to show through and they hit back with three first-half tries from Jake Bibby, Esan Marsters and Adam Swift to turn the game around. Adam Clune and Sam Halsall added two more after the break as Giants won for the third time in six matches this season. They are now two points off the play-off places in the early running, whereas Broncos remain rooted to the bottom as one of two teams yet to win this season alongside Castleford. But Giants boss Watson felt his side were fortunate they were not made to pay a heavier price for their slow start.

‘I thought we started the game with the right mindset, in the right way, being nice and physical defensively,’ he said. ‘Then we just lost our way a little bit in terms of our intensity in defence. We gave them a little bit of a leg up. ‘The thing London do is they try, they don’t go away. They have a dig and they work really hard. We gave them a bit of field position, so when we had to defend our goal-line, eventually it cracked, which fuelled them even more. ‘We knew they were going to be there then for the full half and that’s how it turned out. The game was 50-50 in the first half, but then in the second half we corrected what we had spoken about and we were a lot better then.

‘The way London defend, it’s pretty disruptive. You can see lots of different options. As a ball player, you see one right in front of you but there are about three options to pick. ‘We rectified it and we got away with it. If we had done that against one of the bigger teams, maybe we wouldn’t have got away with it.’ Broncos coach Mike Eccles was left to reflect on a game that got away from his team after they had held their own until the interval.

‘The way we started the second half is the way we got blown away in most of the first halves earlier in the year,’ he said. ‘Whereas this week, we’re finally getting to grips with the starts of games and the intensity required. Then it’s just about reproducing that. ‘Huddersfield starved us of any territory. They were very good in that second half.’