Huddersfield Giants head coach Luke Robinson has spoken after the club’s disappointing 23-10 loss to Salford Red Devils.
In a battle between the two winless teams in Super League, Salford came out on top and they looked the far better side as they punished Huddersfield’s sloppy attack to race into a 16-0 lead from which they never looked like losing.
Huddersfield did score two tries in the final 15 minutes and Adam Swift made a brilliant try-saving tackle to show that the spirit and heart is there, but the performance was not and neither is the Giants’ luck.
They’ve had terrible injury luck and that has got worse with Luke Robinson confirming post-match on Sky Sports that new signing Niall Evalds may have broken his foot.
Evalds didn’t return for the second half, and a deflated Robinson admitted to Sky: “It looks like he broke his foot and he doesn’t know how, so yeah.”
Having only signed the full-back this week, it’s a huge blow with Robinson explaining: “Look, I’m really excited to get Niall on board, he’s an unbelievable player. He’s someone I thought would really add to our team, and obviously he hadn’t even trained with us because of the short turnaround.
“He doesn’t know how but fingers crossed it isn’t broke. The physio and the doctor are looking at the moment and it looks like it could be. He doesn’t know how he’s done it and what’s happened but he came in at half time and said ‘I’m in agony’.”
Huddersfield Giants boss bemoans “worst performance of the season”
.@SalfordDevils snatch their first win of the the 2025 @Betfred #SuperLeague season! 👹 pic.twitter.com/GRJyIFYza4
— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) March 20, 2025
Whilst Huddersfield looked flat, they were nullified by Salford who looked unaffected despite having a turbulent week themselves that has seen Brad Singleton leave the club.
Robinson praised the hosts, stating: “I’ve got to give some credit to Salford, I thought they were great. I told our team before we went out that they have still got really good players in that squad. They still have Nikorima who we couldn’t lay a hand on.”
However, he wasn’t happy with his own side’s showing, adding: “I’m just so disappointed because every single game this year I felt like we could have won. Every game I thought we’d been in it, it’s been a contest and that tonight we probably dished up our worst performance of the season.
“It was a short turnaround from us, we played Sunday, but that’s just an excuse. We just looked flat, we just didn’t have as much energy as we should have done.”
In every previous game, the Giants have led at half-time before then losing but their showing against Salford never saw them land a blow until the game was gone and the Huddersfield boss reflected on that.
Speaking on a potential lack of confidence, he said: “We put ourselves in a really good position to win games and the performance has been really good but when you don’t pick up the two points, you know those narrow defeats to Hull and the likes of them where it sort of springboards them and you start asking questions of yourself and your teammates so obviously confidence gets affected, but we’ve got to find a way from somewhere. I was just really disappointed in the performance tonight.”
Positive news was that Jacob Gagai will return next week but the club’s other spine players are still a long way away.
“Potentially we’ve got a few coming back next week,” Robinson confirmed.
“Potentially, we might have George King and (Tom) Burgess but the spine members, the ones that are really important to us, Adam Clune, Kieran Rush and Zac (Woolford) are going to be another nine of ten weeks.”
