Oliver Russell is feeling the stress of Huddersfield manager Ian Watson – by doing the job

OLIVER Russell knows exactly what Huddersfield manager Ian Watson goes through every week of his life as a saint.

The Giants half-back spends his free time helping youth club Oldham St. Annes in their National Conference League campaign.

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He was on the sidelines at Bentley in South Yorkshire yesterday as he passed on the benefit of his Super League expertise.

And rest assured the referee won’t be fooled as Huddersfield’s day job at Salford seeks to avenge two-point losses to Wigan and St Helens.

“I feel Wattos pain,” said Russell, who saw a 28-12 win. “Now I kind of understand.

“But one of the reasons I do it is to get an understanding of the whole game, not just the gameplay aspect.

“I learn a lot from coaching. It really is child’s play. When I have dinner time, I might as well give back to the club that allowed me to start playing.

“When I go to training, I said to the players: ‘I didn’t come to waste my time with you guys. I want to win games.’

“And I’m a pretty chilled person anyway, so it’s not in me to get angry. I’d rather speak to a player individually if they made a mistake or if it’s a referee I just ask them a question.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever done coaching and I’m really enjoying it, although it’s a bigger role than I thought it would be.

“We’re all mixing it up but I’m taking a little bit of the lead in attack and I’m at the games while my schedule allows, I haven’t missed one yet.

“And I was at Bentley yesterday. I got home, relaxed and got ready for today.”

Huddersfield head to Salford today hoping to show lessons are being learned, lessons learned from back-to-back 14-12 defeats to Wigan and St Helens.

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But Russell, 24, thinks he’d rather have examples like this to cite as they seek fame.

He added: “I’d rather be in a situation like that than get toned every week. We’re not worried, we’ve played Wigan and St Helens, probably number one and two in the league.

“We know we can compete with the best teams. We just need to brush things up or we just lack focus for a minute or so and that gets to us in the end.

“We both put us in a really difficult position in the game. There were a few mistakes with the kicks against Wigan – if they hadn’t happened we would have won the game.

“If we hadn’t had such a lack of concentration that allowed Konrad Hurrell to score an easy try, we would have won that one.

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“It’s those small margins that cost us and Salford will be one of our biggest Tests of the year. We will know a lot about ourselves from the result, we are starting with a play-off mentality and do not want to lose three times in a row.”

Watson, who returns to his former club, is expected to have outsider Jake Connor on his side after coming off the bench after returning from injury.

And Russell told SunSport he’s adding something alongside Tui Lolohea and Will Pryce.

He said: “We have a pretty good mix in our backbone, with Nathan Peats and I being more controlling players, then you have your underdogs like Tui, Will and Jake.

“You can just make something out of nothing. When they see what they want to do, they express themselves and want to take their chances.”