Huddersfield Giants will welcome a host of key players back to their team this week but they’ve also confirmed a season-ending injury for one of their standouts.
Prop forward Chris Patolo signed ahead of the 2026 season and the young prop has been a bright spark in what has been a very tough season, but head coach Jim Lenihan has now announced that the forward is now done for the year.
Patolo was a surprise omission from Huddersfield’s 21-man squad and when asked why at his presser, Lenihan told BBC Radio Leeds: “He fractured his arm. He’s done for the year.
“He ended up with a fracture on the outside bone of his forearm just above the elbow from probably just contact and running.
“Unfortunately, for him, I think he’s going to have an operation to have a pin put through. I’m not sure whether it’s the radius or the ulna, but one of the bones on the outside of his forearm has sustained a fracture from the weekend’s game. He’ll largely be done for the year now.”
Whilst that is a substantial blow, the Giants were able to name long-term absentees Adam Clune and Sam Halsall, as well as Niall Evalds and Tristan Powell in a major boost.
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Huddersfield Giants welcoming back key men for final six games
Both Clune and Halsall have proven to be two of the Giants’ best players in 2026 when fit, however, they’ve both only managed five games this season. Clune has not played since May 2nd whilst Halsall has been out since mid-April.
“They trained today in parts of the session, which was really good,” Lenihan confirmed when asked about the pair’s prospective returns.
“If they get through pretty much over the next 20 hours, that’s the next big sort of window of what happens with them. We’ll see how we get into captain’s run tomorrow, and then hopefully if everything’s still ticking the boxes, they’ll play for us this weekend, so that’ll be some positive news for us as well.
“I think they’re both ahead of schedule, so we’ve been doing really good work, the medical team’s working really hard to be as proactive as they possibly can and being safe as they can.”
Lenihan even revealed that Clune is three to four weeks ahead of schedule with the Australian now a chance of running the team from the halves again, but there is another dilemma in the spine.
That comes at full-back as Niall Evalds returns after his HIA, though George Flanagan has been instrumental in the last two wins.
Lenihan admitted: “We’ve got the opportunity of either moving Niall into full-back and putting George around the backs again or keeping George at full-back and having some more outside backs available.
“I think even next week we get Taane Milne back as well so we’re getting some people back in deck, certainly the outside backs where we’ve been a little bit light the last few weeks. It’s nice to have the luxury of choice.”
