Challenge Cup Final Preview #3 - Ian Watson

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The build up to major finals often focuses on the players, and rightly so. They are the stars of the show. We have already posted profiles of two of the superstars on display this week, Jai Field for Wigan and Jermaine McGillvary for Huddersfield. But the stories of the two coaches is also an interesting sideshow.

The natural assumption to reach in a final involving Huddersfield and Wigan would be that it is the Wigan coach who is on the well-trodden path and the Huddersfield coach is the relative novice. On Saturday, the opposite will be true.

Ian Watson has been here before. In 2019, his Salford side won 10 out of 11 matches from late July to surge from 7th to 3rd in the Super League table. Then followed two comprehensive victories in the play offs, including a stunning away win at Wigan to reach the Grand Final. The following year, a golden try against Catalans and hard-fought win over Warrington saw Salford reach their first Challenge Cup Final in over 50 years.

What those two finals had in common though was failure. Salford were comfortably bettered by St Helens in the 2019 Grand Final and lost courtesy of a late, Luke Gale drop goal to Leeds in the 2020 Challenge Cup Final. Ian Watson knows what it takes to reach a major final, but has not yet proven capable of winning one.

That sounds a little harsh. Salford were major outsiders for both of these finals. Anything but a defeat would have been a shock and there was no disgrace in either loss. Whilst at Salford, Watson was linked to Hull FC and was overlooked for the St Helens job in 2020, with Kristian Woolf getting the nod. Eyebrows were raised when Watson joined Huddersfield in 2021, with many seeing it as a sideways move.

Watson has taken his influential backroom staff with him to Huddersfield and the 2020 off season saw some substantial recruitment. This led to many pundits predicting a high finish in 2021, which never really materialised. This year, expectations were more tempered. But it is in 2022 that you see Watson's process-focused mark all over this Huddersfield side. Patience is a virtue.

His Huddersfield side will enter Saturday's Challenge Cup Final as underdogs once more. Yet this highly rated, young, British coach may have his moment of glory at Tottenham on Saturday, after several near misses.  

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