We must be

And while Stone was encouraged by a lot of what he saw on the night, he doesn’t want to see a repeat of the events of the second half when his side’s intensity dropped.

“The boys definitely deserved to leave the ground feeling good about themselves,” said Stone.

“You’ve got to be happy any time you go away from home on the opening night and come away with the points.

“We were certainly happy with the way we controlled much of the first half (the Giants led 20-6 at the interval).

“I asked for the boys to play some good, basic, direct footy, and that’s exactly what they did.

“Our yardage sets were really good, set up by Ukuma Ta’ai, Seb Ikahihifo and Dale Ferguson, and all the forwards ran hard, broke tackles and won some quick play-the-balls for Danny Brough to put some polish on our last-play options.

“But the overall performance was still far from being perfect.

“Besides Widnes coming out stronger in the second half, I also don’t think we helped ourselves by the way we managed things after the break.

“We came up with a few errors to give Widnes a couple of chances, which they took, and that was a little disappointing.

“So we know we’ve still got plenty of work to do, which is something I want to see when we play Salford on Thursday.”

Friday’s game also marked the full Giants debut at full-back of former St Helens utility back Lee Gaskell following his arrival from Bradford Bulls.

Gaskell just got the nod ahead of 19-year-old Darnell McIntosh, who was 18th man on the night after impressing in the 12-0 warm-up win at Warrington nine days earlier, with Stone admitting it was a tough call to make.

“Yes, it was,” he admitted. “Darnell was really good at War-