Eorl Crabtree: Shooting for the top as we continue to slip under the radar

SOMETIMES it’s just good to get totally away from rugby and when a few of us went shooting in Dewsbury this week that was one of those occasions.
Eorl Crabtree: This week's guest columnist for the Yorkshire Post.Eorl Crabtree: This week's guest columnist for the Yorkshire Post.
Eorl Crabtree: This week's guest columnist for the Yorkshire Post.

We really get into it. I started doing it last September with clay pigeon shooting and now a few of us have taken it up a little bit further.

I’ve got a couple of guns myself and do it regularly every week. I absolutely love it.

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We were all out together – Shaun Lunt, Bob Fairbank Jason Chan – shooting pigeons on someone’s farm.

It’s pest control and totally legal as long as you’re on private land and 150m away from housing.

And we cooked it all afterwards. We set up on his land with all the equipment like hiding nets and camouflage and just got to it.

We were there all day and had an absolute ball. It’s a great way to unwind.

I can’t wait to go again actually and get a bit more kit.

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I was up there leading but Lunty – who loves this sort of thing – was average to say the least.

We were a little under-prepared, though. I won’t go into details but the cartridges we were using weren’t exactly the right ones.

We were using 21s which all they did was basically scare some of those pigeons!

As for the rugby, we’ve got Wakefield on Sunday night and the League Leaders’ Shield is almost in our grasp.

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On a personal level, given my history here at Huddersfield, lifting that silverware would mean everything to me.

It’s an amazing thing to do being relegated with a club, like I was here at Giants, and then being promoted the year after before eventually rising to the very summit of Super League.

I’m quite proud of that achievement more so than the actual silverware.

It’s pretty special. I’m really excited by that prospect and I’m not one of those who take it lightly. We’ve still work to do but I want it more than anything.

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I think more should be made of it (finishing first) but I’m slightly biased.

We all know why the play-offs are there – it’s to raise money and get more people to big games – but at the end of the season it looks like we’ll finish top having beaten more teams than anyone.

That’s fantastic. It shows how much we’re building and still we keep going under the radar.

Yet, hopefully, if a couple more games go our way we could win the League by quite a few points.

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Then I can actually retire at some point looking back thinking ‘Yeah, I actually did something.’

It is really quite funny that we’re still not getting much acknowledgment but it’s good for us if everyone’s talking about other teams. We’ll keep going quietly along and do what we’ve done all year and hope to carry on getting unnoticed.

You’ll probably see the Dream Team at the end of the year and there’ll be Broughy and maybe Brett (Ferres) in there but no other Giants player even though we’ve smashed the league. But it’s standard.

It’s quite amusing at times but that’s the game and what you come to expect. I’m quite cynical so it doesn’t bother me really.

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On the TV, sometimes it’s almost like we’re the bottom club but we’ve worked very hard to get where we are.

I think part of what we’re doing is trying to get better on and off the field professionally and then we’ll think about the other things around it.

But it’s like most things; all about politics and opinions.

As long as we’re doing stuff that actually counts and it is tangible then we’re doing all right and we’re happy.

Interview by Dave Craven