Watto happy with his Giants options
HUDDERSFIELD Giants head coach Ian Watson is pleased with the options available to him ahead of the opening round of the 2021 Super League.
It’s been an off-season full of change for the Salfordian following spells with Swinton Lions and Salford Red Devils.
His time with the Red Devils showed he can extract the most out of his squad, having taken them to the Grand Final in 2019 and the Challenge Cup final last year despite his low budget.
And now, he has a new challenge in West Yorkshire as he prepares for his first season in charge at the John Smith’s Stadium.
He has added eight signings to he squad, using a hit-out against
Halifax and a 22-16 friendly win over Leeds Rhinos on Sunday to assess what he has available to him ahead of his first competitive Giants game in charge against Hull FC a week on Sunday.
And so far he has been pleased with what he has seen - all apart from an injury to full-back Olly AshallBott.
“He’s had a few injuries in the past so sometimes you are a little more careful with Olly,” said Watson.
“We will assess him over the next few days.”
The injury allowed Watson to experiment with multiple options at full-back, as well as utilise some of his younger players against the Rhinos, and he was impressed with how his squad was able to adapt to the challenge.
He said: “We have played around with a few little things in full-back there, we have had young Will Price running in there, young Aidan McGowan who I thought was outstanding in the back end with his goal-line defence to probably stop Leeds from levelling the game.
“It is a good dilemma, it is a great one to have as a coach, to have options to choose from and that competition as well, you can see it throughout the group.
“It’s really pleasing to see we have got options going into round one against Hull
“The big bit I was most pleased with is when your senior players come off and your young guys are on there.
“The Leeds pack probably really took it to us here in the last quarter and we had a young pack out there, but they did really well.
“We left one experienced guy out there with the youngsters to make sure they gave them a little bit of experience in how to handle that and I thought they did great.
“We’ve confidence in them guys to do a job as well which is important and they feel that as well.”