‘We want to strive for perfection’ says Hull FC coach Brett Hodgson

The Australian began his reign with a 22-10 success over former club Huddersfield Giants who were kept scoreless until the last 13 minutes.

Hodgson said: “It was a solid performance.

“I thought during that middle part of the first half we were really good. We asked our middles to show some intent and I thought they did that.

“We looked comfortable and the players looked like they trusted each other and trusted the processes we’ve put in place, which again is what we asked of them. We spoke of just having that defensive intent for 80 minutes.”

Doing that each week is key, though, and Hodgson added: “We’re buoyant, as you’d expect with a win on day one.

“But our challenge is to make sure we’re at the consistent level that we want to be.

“We don’t want to be the team that is up and down and doing the same things that has happened the last couple of years. That’s a big challenge for us.

“The players are actually disappointed about conceding the try in the last minute, which is a good sign because we want to strive for perfection all the time.”

Huddersfield coach Ian Watson was also taking charge of his side for the first time and had a less enjoyable experience.

He said: “It was our errors and ball control that was disappointing. It ended three tries to two and I thought we defended really well for large periods of the game, especially when we went down to 12 men.

“We just made two individual bad errors that led to tries but we can tidy them up.

“We just didn’t respect the ball enough basically.”

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers. Click HERE to subscribe.