Huddersfield Giants’ pre-season buzzword as injury disruption outlined

‘Resilience’ has had to be the buzz word over pre-season at Huddersfield Giants, says head coach Luke Robinson. The Giants are looking to build on last season’s ninth placed finish in Super League and Robinson will have been keen to see his first pre-season in charge of the club go smoothly going into 2025.

However, the head coach has been forced to contend with injuries and the disruption that comes as a result, with players having to sit out of training, including half-backs. And, while the first-team squad are in the Malaga at present, some players remain sidelined with just five weeks to go until the start of the Super League season.

The Giants have had to overcome such issues and they had to pull together as one on Sunday morning, too, as they battled the snow and ice to make their way across the Pennines to Manchester Airport to get themselves to the south of Spain.

“We’ve had a lot of injuries from last season that haven’t really trained with us up to Christmas and we’ve had half-backs that have been injured during pre-season so it’s made it very difficult to get some continuity,” Robinson said in a video posted on Huddersfield Giants’ YouTube channel. “So resilience has been a word we’ve used a lot and that was the case getting over here as well.

“I had to pick Gags [Jacob Gagi] and Milne [Taane Milne] up from their cars because they didn’t know how to drive in the snow and then I had to pick Murch [Jack Murchie] and Aidan [McGowan] up from their house because they couldn’t get out of their street the snow was so bad.

“The bus driver was a like a Formula One driver going down the M62. Luckily he got us there but the coach doors wouldn’t open so me and Finny had to crawl under the bus to get the bags out. To say it was an ordeal was an understatement.

“We wanted to get everybody over here. We have a fair few lads on the sidelines, they can’t train, so I needed every player out here and I understood how important it was.”