Huddersfield Giants boss Jim Lenihan has offered an honest assessment of his side’s 36-24 defeat to York Knights.
The Giants are yet to win under Lenihan, and they have now gone six matches as boss of the club without a victory.
After being 14-6 down at half-time, York would ease into a 36-12 lead before Oli Russell and George Flanagan Jr added consolation tries in the final six minutes.
The performance falls well below the efforts of last week, with Huddersfield going toe-to-toe with Wakefield before a last-minute winner saw Trinity claim the two points.
This afternoon they looked nowhere near that side, with far too many errors made both individually and collectively.
“It was disappointing today,” he said post-match. I thought, last few weeks, we’ve certainly been taking steps forward with the way we’ve been playing, and getting bits of games on.
“Certainly after last week, I thought we performed really well. Coming into today, we’re obviously looking to keep that momentum, but unfortunately we’ve had a bit of a dip it was a disappointing result for us.”
Huddersfield were without Jacob Gagai, in what was a blow given how impressive and influential the Australian is to the side.
The Giants played Connor Wrench and Tanguy Zenon in the three-quarters, with Gagai’s absence now being clarified.
“He’s just got a little strain in his calf,” Lenihan said. He suffered the blow in last week’s defeat, and was unable to make the matchday squad. He is only expected to miss one or two matches.
Huddersfield Giants boss calls for punishment after hip drop on key man
Whilst they didn’t help themselves in terms of effort, the Giants were put on the back foot after two pieces of potential foul play saw two of their players need to leave the field with injury.
In the first half, Asher O’Donnell suffered what looked to be a hip drop from York’s Cody Hunter, before the shoulder of Xavier Va’a could have been the reason for Chris Patolo’s head knock.
Both incidents were placed on report, but no sanctions were given during the contest, so Huddersfield lost two players whilst York suffered no instant repercussions.
He said: “Asher clearly had a hip drop on him going into the try, and then I’m not really sure on Chris Patolo, whether it was shoulder contact.
“… It certainly makes it hard when you lose two middles that don’t return. It happens, that’s football. We’ve got to be more resilient than that.
“I thought defensively, we were really poor. I didn’t feel like we could really control our try line too well if they got a set or two down on our line.
“We crumbled fairly quickly, which was disappointing after the last few weeks, where we were a little bit more resilient.”
On the hip drop, Lenihan added: “I think it should be something [a disciplinary charge].
“I’ve only been here five or six weeks, but those things are certainly scrutinised in the NRL. If it’s a clear hip drop, then there should be some sort of [punishment]. We lose a player for the whole game, and they get to stay full book.”
There is no definitive confirmation on O’Donnell’s injury just yet, but the early signs are that he has suffered a syndesmosis issue.
