‘Defensively, it was embarrassing’ admits Huddersfield Giants coach Ian Watson

Wakefield ran in five tries in the opening period and Watson admitted: “We didn’t back ourselves defensively.”

He said: “We were poor from the start. We made some errors, but then started building some pressure on their goalline, Jacob Miller got sin-binned and we forced an offload

“Just as we were beginning to get some momentum, we gave it back to them, they come down the other field and score, just because of weak defence.

“Our defence was nowhere near where it has been over the last few weeks to win games and if you play that way, you just want to play with the ball rather than do the defence, you’re not going to win.”

Giants were without the injured Lee Gaskell and lost Josh Jones (foot) in the first half, but Watson stressed: “There can be no excuses about the way we went about things defensively, it was embarrassing.”

Wakefield, in contrast, were solid, until the final moments.

Coach Chris Chester reflected: “I thought we defended really tough in the first 20 minutes.

“Our tryline resilience and energy to keep Huddersfield out, it’s the best defensive performance I’ve seen from a Wakefield team in a number of years. The players deserve all the plaudits.”

Chester added: “Physically we dominated the game and I thought we played the Wakefield way; we scored some fantastic tries and I’ve said from day one, when we have got our best players on the pitch we can beat anybody.

“We’ve beaten a very good team in Huddersfield Giants and I was really pleased with the performance.”

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