Jim Lenihan believes his Huddersfield Giants side are certainly heading in the right direction, after pushing Wakefield Trinity all the way in a dramatic contest.
The Giants lost out 29-23, with Josh Rourke’s last-minute try sealing the win for Trinity, and breaking the hearts of every Huddersfield supporter around.
Jack Sinfield’s drop goal initially gave Wakefield a 23-22 lead with 10 to go, before Oli Russell slotted over a one-pointer of his own to level the game back up with two minutes to go.
All Huddersfield had to do was complete the final set and the game would go to golden point, but a needlessly ambitious pass from Russell landed in the hands of Rourke, who raced away to score.
Despite that though, it was the Giants’ best effort under Lenihan so far, and that is the main takeaway from this afternoon’s proceedings.
“I thought we competed really well today,” the boss said to Sky Sports. “We’ve been saying for the last few weeks, it’s not so much about the outcome, it’s about the effort that goes into it, and the process that we put into our game, and I thought we performed pretty well for the whole 80 minutes, we just got a little bit unlucky at the back end.
“…There certainly are [positive signs]. We’re working hard at training. I know everyone works hard at training, but we’ve doubled everything at training now, and no one sees the double time that we’re putting in at training to try and catch up to where we should be.
“Hopefully, we can start seeing that on the pitch a little bit more, but whether we won today or lost today, the process doesn’t change.
“We’ve still got to keep working hard, we’ve got to understand what effort looks like in a game, I certainly think we’re getting towards that, and now we’ve just got to keep working harder.”
Lenihan tried to take all the heat off Russell, who’s mistake directly cost them the game.
He said: “We all live together, we all die together, so at the moment, it’s not all on Oli’s shoulders, that’s for sure.
“At that moment, he’s trying to win us a game, and we didn’t quite get there today, but us working hard down the track will certainly put us in good stead in the future.”
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