Hodgson: I’m so proud of players
BRETT Hodgson was proud of his Hull FC side’s efforts to dig deep and see off the challenge of Huddersfield Giants.
The Black and Whites were missing 12 senior faces including Jake Connor, Chris Satae and Andre Savelio, who were in action for the Combined Nations All Stars, and the head coach found himself scrambling to get a 17-man squad together in the build-up to the game.
However, despite looking scrappy and disjointed at times, tries from Mahe Fonua, Jack Logan and Connor Wynne were enough to see FC pick up a 17-10 win at the MKM Stadium.
The result comes less than a week after the club’s most impressive performance of the season at Leigh, but Hodgson believes the edgy win over the Giants was more satisfying.
“I’d like to suggest that’s probably a better win than last week’s,” the head coach said.
“We had so much adversity going into this week, like Huddersfield and other clubs as well. I thought we were pretty poor in that first half but the way we came back in that second half was outstanding, I’m really proud of probably entitled to ask a few questions about the treatment of Connor, who played on through the pain of a suspected broken jaw for almost 50 minutes.
The full-back was always going to be keen to play as he represented his family’s Trinidadian heritage and looked to prove a point to England boss Wane, and he was the group. We didn’t get ourselves to put any pressure attacking their try line in the first half, our defensive efforts on our try line were happy to play on before being forced off on the hour mark, with the jaw issue and a knee injury to boot.
Hodgson was happy to put his trust in the player when asked about the situation and he’ll have his fingers crossed that the injury isn’t quite as bad as first feared.
But, given the All Stars were excellent and we only conceded one try all day off the kick.
“To bounce back and control the process of the game and come away with a 17-10 win, I’m extremely proud.”
Unfortunately, Hull saw Danny Houghton, Adam Swift and Jordan Lane pull out of their original 18-man squad pre-match, only adding to their injury woes.
Hodgson has moved to explain the trio’s absence.
He said: “Adam Swift pulled up tight in his groin at the back end of Thursday’s session, he just felt it niggle a little bit.
“We felt it was very risky to play him. Both Danny Houghton and Laney are personal reasons.”
effectively borrowing Connor from Hull to play in a mid-season friendly game, allowing him to put his body on the line and risk damaging the issue further is simply unacceptable.
Sheens insists he will apologise to FC for sending the full-back back to Hull with an issue, but FC are within their rights to ask questions about player welfare.