London Broncos 6 Huddersfield Giants 26: Giants find their way again to pile on the agony for Broncos

Stand-off Tui Lolohea was at the heart of much of the Giants’ attacking thrust as the home side slipped to a fifth straight loss since winning promotion last season.

Broncos had made the brighter start and led early through a try from Oliver Leyland, but Huddersfield took charge thereafter and scores from Jake Bibby, Esan Marsters and Adam Swift gave them a commanding half-time lead.

Adam Clune and Sam Halsall added two more tries in the second half with Lolohea proving equally effective from the tee as with his hands, as Huddersfield wrapped up a deserved win.

However, boss Watson felt his side were fortunate that they were not made to pay for their slow start.

“I thought we started the game with the right mindset, in the right way, being nice and physical defensively,” he said. “Then we just lost our way a little bit in terms of our intensity in defence. We gave them a little bit of a leg up.

“The thing London do is they try, they don’t go away. They have a dig and they work really hard. We gave them a bit of field position, so when we had to defend our goal-line, eventually it cracked, which fuelled them even more.

“We knew they were going to be there then for the full half, and that’s how it turned out. The game was 50-50 in the first half, but then in the second half we corrected what we’d spoken about and I thought we were a hell of a lot better then.

“The way London defend, it’s pretty disruptive. You can see lots of different options. As a ball player, you see one right in front of you but there are about three options to pick.

“We rectified it and we got away with it. If we’d done that against one of the bigger teams, maybe we wouldn’t have got away with it.”

The home side took the lead after 11 minutes and it was a contentious score.

Leyland kicked ahead and sprinted to reach it, winning the footrace and dropping on the ball as it crossed the line, though it looked like a possible knock-on. The video referee adjudged he had grounded the ball legally and once Leyland had converted, the home side led 6-0.

They were good value for their lead, with Giants struggling to get on the ball inside Broncos’ half, but they allowed their opponents back in just before the half-hour mark.

Lolohea kicked through, Bibby chased and got there ahead of the recovering Alex Walker and dropped on it to bring the visitors back to within two points.

It signalled a change in the game’s rhythm and within minutes Giants were ahead.

Lolohea played a clever pass back inside as his team attacked and showing good hands, Marsters took it on and crashed over for a try to make it 8-6.

Kevin Naiqama saved his team with a superb reach to keep Jacob Jones from grounding the ball as Huddersfield’s lead was preserved in the closing minutes of the first half.

Swift registered his ninth try in five games moments before the break, taking Lolohea’s looped pass almost on the touchline and staying just within the line to make it over and get Giants’ third of the half.

From the conversion, Harvey Livett narrowly failed to find the posts as the visitors were made to settle for a 12-6 lead at half-time.

London were beginning to look fatigued and five minutes into the second half they fell further behind.

Clune received the ball wide near the right touchline and a stretched Broncos defence was powerless to prevent him from going over. Taking over kicking duties, Lolohea finally succeeded where Livett had three times failed and converted.

Lolohea kicked a penalty from between the posts to further extend their lead moments later as the hosts’ early ascendancy began to feel increasingly distant.

When Halsall leapt magnificently to take Lolohea’s kick out of the air and drop over the line after an hour, Giants’ victory was convincingly wrapped up.