Nathan Brown: Finding our best form now could prove crucial

Jul 23 2009 by Chris Roberts, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

How important was the win over Warrington, given the nature of the play-off race?

It was huge.

With Hull KR losing at Leeds last Friday, we’ve now got a three-point buffer on them going into the last six games of the regular season.

So the key for us now is to make sure we build on this success.

It was a victory against good opposition, who have a good coach and play a good style of footy.

They’re a team who you know will test you to the full, but I thought we handled them extremely well and that should give us confidence for the challenges ahead.

We do seem to be hitting form at a good time, which is important. Form is something you can’t just turn on and off, and to be finding it now as the play-offs approach and when our Challenge Cup semi-final against St Helens is getting nearer is encouraging.

What’s really good is that we know that if we can now win our fair share of games, the teams below us won’t be able to catch us.

Eorl Crabtree was singled out for praise over the way he played. Was that fully deserved?

He was outstanding, as he has been for us a lot this season, and he showed again why Tony Smith picked him for England.

He put in a world-class game for us, and he definitely swung the contest our way.

But Eorl would also be the first to acknowledge that he only had the opportunity to make the impact he did on the back of the outstanding defensive work of Keith Mason, Darrell Griffin and David Faiumu.

I also thought Brett Hodgson was a class above on the field, and the likes of Luke Robinson and Paul Jackson also produced some of their best performances of the year.

And, usually, when your really good players play really well, you’re always going to give yourself a chance of winning the game.

Scott Moore has been one of your most consistent players this year, so why did he start on the bench last weekend.

There were a couple of reasons, to be honest.

First of all, Shaun Lunt has been doing some really good things for us this season and he deserved the chance to start.

But Scotty had been pretty poorly during the week and wasn’t able to train with us until the back end, so we felt it was the best way to go.

And we were pleased with the way it went.