Nathan Brown: Swinton cup clash, Keith Mason’s form and the Luke O’Donnell sin-binning
Huddersfield Giants coach Nathan Brown answers the questions put by Examiner RL writer Chris Roberts
Have you decided what sort of side you’re going to put out against Swinton Lions yet?
It will be a strong one.
There will be one or two changes, but certainly nothing too dramatic.
It’s been decided to give Eorl Crabtree and Jerry McGillvary a week off, because they’ve hardly missed so far this season. I’m sure they’ll benefit from the break.
Kev Brown’s been carrying a couple of niggles, so he’ll have the week off, too.
And Larne Patrick has this week had a screw removed from the hand he broke during pre-season training. That’ll rule him out.
But, apart that, we’ll be running with the same group of players who have been doing so well over the past few weeks, and that’s very important.
We’re obviously keen to play as many of those who missed a fair bit of the start of the season through injury as we can.
They all need game-time now, so they need to play rather than take a rest.
The final squad won’t actually be decided until later today at the earliest, but it certainly won’t be a bunch of kids running out there for us this weekend, that’s for sure.
Every single player that’ll play for the Giants this weekend has Super League experience and is 100% capable of doing a top-class job.
And we also know we need to play well to guarantee success against Swinton.
We’ve now had the chance to take a good look at them, and they do play with a lot of structure.
They have half-backs with a good passing game and wingers who are big and strong, so there’s no way we’ll be taking them for granted.
You obviously rested Greg Eden and played Aaron Murphy at full-back at Bradford. Have you decided who’ll get the nod this weekend?
They’ll both play, although Aaron is set to play in a different position, because he’s such a good utility player.
And that’s certainly no reflection on the way he played at full-back against the Bulls, when I thought he did a great job.
To be honest, I thought all our back three were outstanding.