Nathan Brown column with video

Apr 15 2010 by Chris Roberts, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

How pleased are you that the tough Easter programme is now behind you?

Delighted is probably the word to use.

This time of the year really is a horrible period.

We’ve just had to play the Sunday before Easter (against St Helens) then Friday, Monday, Friday, and that’s got injury written all over it, so to come through it relatively unscathed is good news.

Obviously, the results over Easter weren’t perfect – it certainly wasn’t the plan to lose at Salford! – but this time last year we won all three of our games over this period but lost key people through long-term injuries.

This time we won two out of three and have avoided picking up any major injuries, and we’d have settled for that before the Easter programme got under way.

We’re now hoping we can kick-on and start to build some real momentum for the business end of the season.

Last year, we set off like a house on fire, picked up those injuries over Easter and lost our momentum towards the end of the year. That’s something we’re determined to avoid this time around.

After the Castleford game we gave the players four days off to help freshen them up, because they were all reasonably tired.

Hopefully, it won’t take too long before we see some positive results from this course of action.

Does the fact you ‘nilled’ a side for the third time this season last Friday (beating Castleford 24-0) mean your defence is better than ever?

Not really.

I genuinely believe we’re not defending quite as well as we were this time last year. There are still some areas where there is room for improvement.

And, you’ve got to remember, that even though we did soak up a fair amount of pressure against Castleford last Friday, they did have a few of their key attacking personnel sitting in the stands and they would have made it even tougher for us.

As a result, we won’t be getting too carried away just yet.

Our attack is also still far from perfect.

As everyone saw last Friday, our ball control just wasn’t there at all, which was another indication that we’re not playing quite as well as we were this time last year.

Fortunately, you had David Hodgson coming to the rescue against Castleford with his hat trick against Castleford. How important do you believe he is for the team?

He’s a very good player, it’s as simple as that.

With Dave Hodgson, you know what you’re going to get every week, and a coach really can’t ask any more of a player than that.

He’s probably had just two average games since I’ve been here, because you can usually guarantee he’ll be good every week.

And against Cas the other night, he again showed that if you put him in the right position he’ll score for you.