Woolford slams game management

Huddersfield Giants Head Coach Simon Woolford has slammed his side’s performance as they went down to Leeds Rhinos at Emerald Headingley stadium on Sunday evening.

The Giants led 26-6 with 65 minutes played and looked all set to go top of the Betfred Super League table. But Leeds had other ideas, as they staged an unbelievable fightback in the dying stages to claim a dramatic 27-26 win in golden point extra-time.

He said. “I thought we were fantastic for 65 minutes. We completely dominated the game and we should have won.

“However, they then got a try back and we somehow could not cope.

“Our discipline went out of the window, rather than re-group and re-adjust ourselves, we gave away far too many penalties late on.

“We had plenty of opportunities to put the game to bed. Not only tries but late on, Lee Gaskell was unfortunate to miss his attempt at field-goal but Luke Gale did what he did.”

The result leaves the Giants winless at ‘home’, whereas the Rhinos themselves went top of the table as they extended their unbeaten run to five matches.

However, the match was perhaps marred with controversy as Woolford questioned referee Robert Hicks after his decision to award a try by Alex Mellor without consulting the video referee.

Woolford added. “Very controversial try awarded to Alex Mellor. My video analyst did confirm to me later that it was not a try.

“I thought Robert Hicks was unacceptable in awarding it immediately rather than referring it to the video referee as he did with earlier efforts in the first half.

“However, we still need to be smarter and work on our game management. We have a week off now to re-group and get ourselves together for the remainder of the season.”