Ian Watson | “We are focusing solely on this one game”

Of all the sides involved in the Qualifiers this season, the one which is the greatest unknown to the majority of fans, is Thursday’s visiting team from the south of France, Toulouse Olympique. 
Watson said: “We have watched every single game that Toulouse have played, in these Qualifiers, so as a coaching staff we are well aware of the threats they pose, and so it has now been a case of passing all this on to the players.
“We have identified our strengths and done a lot of practice around these, so that we get off to the best possible start.
“It’s been a busy couple of days going through all the videos of their previous six games, and taking out all the information from them to pass on to the players, who have been learning and recovering from the trip down to London.
“Defensively we were all right at times, but at other times we were a little bit soft by our standards, so even though it was low scoring there are a few things we can improve upon.
“Attack-wise we were poor, and our detail and skill level were way off. We thought that we had prepared really well but our mentality, on the day, was all wrong. If we had stuck with our processes in the first half, as we did start to do in the second half, we would have been in a better position by half time.
“Instead we started inventing things and consequently our game plan fell apart. We addressed this at half time, and did a whole lot better in the second half, scoring a couple of tries which, with a better start, would have won us the game.
“We have just had to ensure we don’t overload the players with too much for them to assimilate following last weekend. We left them alone for a couple of days so that both physically and psychologically they had chance to recover. Since then we have compared videos of out London game and Toulouse’s home game against Hull KR, and shown a number of similarities between the two, because if we repeat elements from last week we will just put ourselves under pressure again.”
Whatever the shortcomings from the weekend, it has certainly set up the final round of the fixtures for a grandstand finish, and in front of the television cameras.
“We absolutely have to focus on ourselves, make sure we get our mentality right and stick to what we have prepared and worked upon. We are focussing solely on Thursday night, as by doing all this, we will not have any match next week to bother about. As far as we’re concerned this is our last game.
“We are still in a really strong position because it is in our own hands. It is all down to us.”