Now the dust has settled from yesterday's slightly controversial announcement, I wonder how the players from both teams feel. There's not a chance our decision was honestly made by the board as that will just have been a smokescreen. Smith and the rest of the coaching staff will have discussed it as soon as we beat Leeds to claim it, and agreed it with the players, so ours will have known for a week now it would be either Huddersfield or Hull, and known it would be Huddersfield since about 8.10pm on Thursday night.

They'll therefore have been preparing for this Thursday ever since. Wigan and Leeds might be slightly surprised to be playing each other, but won't see much positive or negative either way from it, although Wigan might be a bit more disappointed than Leeds are.

Huddersfield's players will definitely feel like they've taken a bit of stick here. Imagine finishing top of the table (making you "true champions" in some people's eyes, although not in mine and I said that same in 2011), then getting beat in week one, losing your home advantage semi, and also getting called out in ClubCall which is basically saying "Yeah well done, but we still don't rate you as highly as you might like us to." Yes it will give them a bit of extra fire in their eyes, but going out too pumped up isn't always ideal anyway. Just look at our own captain as an example of that when he was so pumped up for an international match he ended up leaving his teammates to play 79 minutes and 48 seconds of it without him! Unless it's controlled properly, added fire doesn't always work.

Could it also have put doubts their minds though? They should be riding high - as we were at this stage in 2011 after winning the LLS and sailing through week one, before Leeds brought us crashing down - but the contrast in the Wigan and Hull games suggests inconsistent form, and now they're singled out as the supposed easier targets. They finished top but the bookies rank them fourth out of four in the betting for the main title, and ClubCall suggests their semi final opponents agree with the bookies. In many ways that's quite humiliating, especially as their the first team other than the lowest ranked to be called, and Anderson didn't look overjoyed yesterday. With less time to prepare and all sorts going through their heads - both positive and negative - it could be interesting to see how they react on Thursday.

Someone posted in another thread that they could see one team winning convincingly on Thursday, and for some reason I agree. I don't know who is going to win - obviously I hope it's us - but I do see the margin of victory being wider than it is in the Wigan V Leeds match. I can see one team really getting thumped in our match and I really hope it isn't Warrington!

Its a strange one....on the back of the Leeds display you would have to say that we look up for these playoffs and would take some beating.

Having said that, there have been some real abject displays this season where we have looked very ordinary. Hull x 2, Widnes x 2, saints at home..... i hate to think that we could see a display like that on thu... But you just don't know.

The only do or die game we've lost this season was the Hull CC semi, although you're right about our performances in the others you mention. That game was the biggest of Hull's season at the time though, and with no likelihood of Widnes doing anything significant their two games against us were their biggest as well. I'm not saying that excuses our performances in them - the semi was a big disappointment and two Widnes games, especially the home game, were just plain embarrassing. I think those games, even the CC semi as I believe the SL title is the one we truly covet, were bigger for our opponents than they were for us though.

This Thursday is absolutely massive for us though. No question. After the CC semi my thoughts immediately fast forwarded to the play offs, and after league defeats I always had "the bigger picture" in my mind and was looking at the table and forthcoming fixtures for ourselves and those around us. Lose on Thursday though and all that will be left is the hollow emptiness of Leeds at home 2011 and Leeds at Old Trafford 2012. No bigger picture to focus on. No positives to turn our attention to. Nothing but a season of failure to dwell on for four months, and unlike 2011 and 2012 not even the consolation of a Challenge Cup or League Leaders' Shield to polish.

I suspect winning the LLS might be as good as it gets in Huddersfield minds. Do they really believe they are going to win at Old Trafford or do they accept what they have achieved already as success? In 2011 some of us really believed it (I did) but as I said above our passage to the qualifying semi final was smoother than Huddersfield's has been. We did however have plenty of people on here crying about how we had proudly won the league and the play offs were an unfair competition invented by Sky (not true obviously, but stilll...), while Leeds, Wigan and Saints fans enjoyed reminding us that we weren't champions yet. Huddersfield are in that exact boat now. If they have nothing but a burning desire to prove that their Shield really does mean something and they really are the country's number one team who just suffered a minor blip against Wigan (I'm ignoring their game V Bradford for obvious reasons) then we could be in trouble. If however they've got any self doubt in their minds whatsoever then we have to seize the opportunity to finish them off.

We can't blame naivety or experience anymore after four consecutive top four seasons - three in the top two - with the silverware we've picked up elsewhere in that time, so there can be absolutely no excuses on our part and nothing left on that field on Thursday night. I can't wait!

Anderson is already playing the written off tune.

I do like the fact that after finding out we had picked them they had to arrange training that day instead of today, not perfect.

The reaction of the Huddersfield camp was great yesterday. Davy and Hetherington were sitting there and while Hetherington looked surprised his expression also said, "Fair enough then. We'll take an extra day to prepare to face a team that didn't put 40 points on us last week. Thanks very much". Davy just smiled one of those knowing resigned smiles that said, "I knew it. I hoped I'd be wrong but I knew it." Anderson just looked gutted in his interview.

I don't normally bother with the other boards on here but read all the reaction on the Huddersfield and Leeds boards last night and they were great. Leeds fans weren't bothered while some Huddersfield fans were fuming. They've got some posters like Meast and Giant Daz who regularly post on here and are sound, and I think it was a few of them who were behind the "Well done Wire" banner at the 2011 play off after we won the LLS which was a nice touch. If we do get beat on Thursday I'll be pleased for lads like that if they then go on and win it. They also however had plenty of whoppers on there board throwing "It's not fair!" tantrums though which was brilliant. I just hope their players have some of those weaknesses in their minds too.

It could fire them up, that's a natural reaction but equally doubts could creep in, they might start thinking that they're inferior and the occasion could get to them.

Lastly there's the fact they're big daft lads and they can't even spell si-cology and don't care one bit, it's just another game.

Hudds are our beeatches, long may it continue
Wigan are also our beeatches at the HJ
I'm more pee'd off we couldn't pick Wigan, at least it would've been a sell-out. Hudds probably wont bring more than 1500

No mind games here. Just cold, logical thinking.

Win this, and win in 12 days time. HAPPY DAYS.

ONWARDS WIRE

Either way, we just need to expect Huddersfield to bring their A* game.

My worries personally are

A) that we think we have the measure of Huddersfield and mentally think we've got this one nailed before stepping on to the pitch. It would only take 2/3 players to take this attitude up to ruin it for everyone.

B) that the weeks break will have done more harm than good to us.

Time will tell!

We will be prepared and we won't slip up like we did in the Challenge Cup.

And we won't lack 'motivation'.

For me, the outrage and anger is fear, pure and simple. If they really did think they were better than us then they would see us as easy meat and not have batted an eyelid at the situation because they'd see us as the easier route to the final, but they don't, they're very angry and it's because they now know that their chances of getting to the final have diminished somewhat. They have the 3 defeats this season hanging over their heads, they have the pressure on themselves to get to the final because they so desperately want to be acknowledged as a force to be taken seriously. Their anger is frustration at the fact they now have to prove themselves yet again.

It'll either be their downfall, or ours.

Don't quite get the gripes on Huddersfield's part - If they hadn't have bottled their game with Wigan, then they would have had the choice of opponent themselves and they could have been as arrogant as we are, and chose some easy-to-beat team, meaning Old Trafford would be a given and not the uncertain task that it now is?....

Some very good posts on this and I can understand your confidence. your recent ecord against the Giants would seem to make Thursday a foregone conclusion and I can see that. I don't understand the whinging from some Giants fans over the Club call - everybody I know and heard at the game last week knew this would be the outcome. However!! As a Giants fan I genuinely fancy us to get the win. I agree with the poster who said that much of the Giants fans anger was probably based on a fear of Warrington, and it seems a lot have decided we won't win. Not my view though! As far as I'm concerned this can go either way but I am confident. Having said that, if the worst happens I hope you go on to win it.

Some excellent and entertaining stuff here, but my own opinion is that the psychology of it all doesn't really matter. Both teams will surely be 100% motivated anyway, so the 'extra motivation' theory doesn't really wash. It will be a tough game that could go either way and will be decided by the odd piece of brilliance or the odd mistake, I imagine. And that would also have been the case had we picked Leeds. You've just got to play hard and smart, and maybe get a bit of luck when you need it.

One of the things I have gathered from this ClubCall is the immense amount of Huddersfield fans that have chips on their shoulders.

To be fair and it's been said elsewhere that there are some decent posters on there, BTW would our reaction have been any different and I mean as a collective?