Opposing fans views on Giants vs Saints in Round 12 of the Betfred Super LEague

Written by Greg Roche Heritage Number No.2

Greg Roche - He has his own doll you know!

Firstly credit to saints, especially for their first half performance. Strong, fast, physical, error free and well organised. Winning most rucks. Perhaps the best first half performance I’ve seen this year from them in the Betfred Super League.

They also played the ref well - laying on, slowing down the PTBs, and if the ref (our local Huddersfield celebrity - Kendal) doesn’t penalise it, well it’s just not a penalty is it then.

Think Robbo got his team selection wrong last night. He was trying to fit in too many senior players, and ended up with too many players out of their best positions.

Lack of practice time together made us look like a collection of individuals, and not a team at all. Oppositely saints looked well structured and threw some excellent shapes , keen dummy runners and created space for their playmakers.

Whitley was fun to watch. What a talent. Great goal kicking too, and for one conversion in front of us he was getting some stick from giants fans, and when he nailed it, he turned around and gave a cheeky wink and smile, which was funny. Definitely a very talented lad.

Robbo's post match press conference was worrying. He didn’t really have any answers to what went wrong - and as always he didn’t make excuses.

Lolohea over Flanagan due to better in defence?

Roll on Thursday vs Leigh.

And despite all the above, got to smile as I spent an evening watching our great game, plus got to hang around with the wonderful person that is Joel, and the legend that is his dad.

Written by Richard Ellis Heritage Number 49

And to underpin Greg's write up:

Unsure about Hudds and their positional selection, as not really seen them this year. The personnel in their backline looks capable to me but of course, team needs to be going forward. The pack however looked poor. I'm not equipped for a forensic assessment (slowing PTB for instance but.... when was the last time you saw a player sin binned for this offence? Surely that's a sign that the ref was trying to police it) but the lack of errors from Saints meant a lot of hard work for the Giants pack.

Usual thing happened too: the team under the cosh gets a couple of six agains and a penalty in the last three or so minutes of the half which is of little use. I wonder if this is the refs trying to balance or if it's the dynamic between the teams.

Whitby: forget his attack last night, focus on his defence....outstanding and Swift's edge was particularly well marshalled by George.

More disappointingly is the atmosphere and sparse bodies in there. I was due to meet my mate who's a season ticket holder, but he said the event of watching his team is soulless and tedious: he went out with his dog instead!

Hope the ground switch will reinvigorate the Giants... we need them

A big test awaits vs KR next week!