Jake’s back, but Joe will be a while
“Crowds can have an effect on games, especially if it is tight.
“You would think Warrington would have that extra bit of energy coming from their crowd on Monday, so we are expecting a really tough battle.
“They are travelling along really nicely and are starting to get some of their star players back now.
“They have a really strong team, but it is up to us to present a strong challenge to them and play to our strengths.
“It would have been great to get the Cowbell Army back going this week, but we have to wait a while. But they are ready to come back and hopefully in large numbers.”
WARRINGTON coach Steve Price expects to have fullback Stefan Ratchford back after he missed the cup win over Catalans with a foot injury while prop Mike Cooper will captain the side in the absence of Jack Hughes, who serves a one-match ban. Giants have centre Jake Wardle back from a threematch injury absence, which will enable Chris McQueen to return to the pack. It is likely to be the only change to the team that lost to St Helens in the cup.
LAST SEASON
LAST SIX LEAGUE MATCHES
TOP TRY SCORERS
TOP GOAL SCORERS
GIANTS SQUAD
2 Jermaine McGillvary, 3 Jake Wardle, 4 Ricky
Leutele, 5 Darnell McIntosh, 6 Lee Gaskell, 7 Aidan Sezer, 8 Luke Yates, 9 Adam O’Brien, 10 Michael
Lawrence, 11 Kenny Edwards, 13 Josh Jones, 14 Matty English, 15 Joe Greenwood, 16 Jack Cogger, 17 Chris McQueen, 18 Jack Ashworth, 19 James Cunningham, 20 Oliver Wilson, 21 Leroy Cudjoe, 22 James Gavet, 25 Owen Trout, 27 Sam Wood.
IAN Watson will have Jake Wardle back for tonight’s trip to Warrington Wolves, but brother Joe has suffered a set-back in his recovery from injury.
“It’s huge to have Jake back and, hopefully, he can have stay fit and have a great season,” said the Giants head coach.
“We’ve been a bit up and down with the availability of the centres, so it will be good to potentially get out first-choice centre pairing out there on Monday.
“Jake had an issue in pre-season, he hypeextended his shoulder, that needed to settle down. Then he had an issue with his foot. But he is fully fit now.”
But elder brother Joe Wardle has suffered another injury setback after breaking down in training.
Watson explained: “Joe’s having it really tough. We would love to have him back too. He got injured in pre-season with his hamstring and we felt like we were getting somewhere as he started to come back into training and feel good.
“But then he tore the tendon at the top of his hamstring, which obviously put him out for 10 weeks.
“It then looked like he was potentially going to join back in with us this week but he’s had a bit of a breakdown again.
“We’ve kind of unloaded him again and hopefully he comes through this pretty quickly.
“But it’s just setback after setback for Joe at the moment and we miss him being in the squad.
“He brings something to the team that probably nobody else brings and his experience is key too.
“Hopefully we’ll not be too long.”