Woolford’s men lay down league marker

SIMON Woolford has described Huddersfield Giants’ impressive 12-10 victory away at St Helens as one of his proudest moments in rugby league.

The Claret and Gold laid down their Super League credentials with an impressive win over the defending champions at the Totally Wicked Stadium.

And it left the head coach beaming.

He said: “I couldn’t be prouder really. I’ve been around rugby league for a long time as a player and a coach and wins don’t come much better than that.

“We lost Lee Gaskell in the first five minutes but it was the first week we’ve put a half/hooker on the bench so that worked out well for us.

“And then we lost Ukuma [Ta’ai] we had 15 men for 55 or 60 minutes and so Saints at Saints under that adversity takes a massive effort.

“I said to the guys at half-time that whatever effort we’re willing to put in this game, we need to find another 10 or 15 per cent each, and we did.

“There were a lot of things that went against us today and, you know, we just found a way.

“Last week (against Wigan) things went against us and we didn’t handle it well at all, this week it was like there was a different team out there.

“We learned a couple of lessons from last week and it was important 122 57 6 112 93 6 141 138 6 78 100 6 93 109 4 76 150 2 84 169 2 70 214 0

for the group that we bounced back and that we put in a good performance.

“But to come away with a win like that under the circumstances, it’s worth more than two points, that’s for sure.”

Huddersfield inflicted St Helens’ first home defeat since 2018 and in doing so, turned a lot of heads within the rugby league world.

Giants have now won their first four away games on the spin and sit in fourth place in Super League.

“We understand that people outside don’t really respect us yet, but we have to earn that,” he said. “We had three wins early and a lot of people saw those as soft wins, we played Catalans who were underdone, then we played KR and Salford who were struggling but you’ve still got to turn up and win.

“Last week we let ourselves down, no doubt about it, that was our first opportunity to show people this team is a different team this year.”

“But I thought we bounced back tonight well and like I said, wins don’t get any better than that.

“There were a lot of question marks over tonight and I thought the first 20 minutes was crucial to our chances tonight and I thought we handled that first 20 well.

“There were a lot of things to like and a lot of our focus this week, we nailed tonight and from a confidence point of view, that’s invaluable that win.”