Huddersfield Giants boss Jim Lenihan has provided a blunt but honest response after his side’s poor showing in defeat to Hull FC.
The Giants suffered their seventh defeat in a row, with Lenihan being in charge of three of those since his arrival from Brisbane Tigers.
The start to the game was promising, with Oliver Russell crossing for the opening try of the game. That would be their last points until the final few minutes, however, with Connor Wrench adding a consolation score with just minutes to go.
Lenihan admitted that the opening moments of the game were an improvement from the last two weeks, but overall it was yet another dismal showing from the West Yorkshire outfit, who remain bottom of the table.
“It was obviously a disappointing result,” he said to Sky Sports. “I think at half-time, we’re probably in a position where we’re competing okay.
“After half-time we had a few things go against us and a couple of individuals missed their jobs. We waste all our energy, some people just can’t get their individual job right. Then we sort of fall into a heap.
“We mentally let the game go, and then we were not mentally in a good position to finish the game off.”
With three games now under his belt, the new boss was asked what he has learned since he has arrived at the club, with effort and menality being high on his things to fix up.
“We’ve just got to work a lot harder,” he explained: “We think we’re working hard. We think we’re doing a really tough job.
“But at the moment, other sides are working harder than us. We’ve got to stay in the game mentally as much as we do physically. It’s not a game that’s going to come easy, and we can’t find comfort in the game.”
Huddersfield Giants suffer seventh straight defeat after Hull FC hammering
He continued: “At the moment, we’re trying to find patches in the game where we can find comfort. And at the moment, we don’t deserve that. We’ve got to keep working harder and then complement good work with more good work.
“Today, the game was on a knife-edge where all we had to do was get a bit more detail right. And then we really put ourselves into a good position for the game.
“At the end of the day, some people miss their assignments, then all the energy that goes into that gets wasted, and it’s hard to keep getting it back.
“When the game was slipping from us, we let go a little bit more. So again, we’ve got to keep finding that mentality and an edge to stick with the game and compete regardless of the score.”
With new recruit Zane Dunford landing in the UK this week, Lenihan was unsure if any further recruits could be added before the end of the season.
“I’m not exactly sure where we can do that,” he said. “We’ll obviously talk with the people that deal with that with us and our club and our retention, but some good people are really going to help us quickly. And when that’ll happen, we’ve just got to work through it until then.
“Until we get other people that are coming to the club and doing a better job for us, we’ve got to keep expecting a better job from the people we’ve got.”
