Well you could have written the game report at 7pm last night a spoiling, niggling game where the away team slowed it down and then speeded it up to suit.

They had a game plan not a pretty one but one that worked. From the early cheap shots on Brough, after he had kicked to test how far the referee would let them go, to feigning injury to slow the game down when we threatened to get into it.

They compounded this by sticking to the ball like glue when in possession and almost forcing us to chase a game that didn’t need chasing just patience and managing the mess until the chances came.

We spurned the first one with a kick to level the scores at 2-2 running it and coughing up possession on tackle 2, stupid when having defended like trojans in the first half when down to 12 and criminal in a knockout match that was expected to be close.

We took the second one to go 6-4 up and first Seb coughed it up on tackle 2 after the kick off and Darnell once again made a beggar of a high ball and we were 6-10 down just truly barmy on our behalf and we never really recovered as they were smarter than us.

Yes you can point out some of Gareth Hewer and his teams oddball decisions, the Cats gamesmanship but all in all the better team won against the ‘headless chickens’ proving that even an ugly game plan is better than seemingly not having one at all.

Really glad I didn't fork out even £15 to watch that pile of crap. It was like watching the team of 2 months ago when Rick Stone was in charge. No attack, nothing creative, no ambition, no real enthusiasm but decent defence in the 1st half. 5 drives and a kick, which were poor anyway. Why, when there's only 4 games on this weekend, are we allocated a part-time ref??? Mind you I've said it before that the officiating in RL as a whole is poor to say the least. Every game is blighted by really bad decisions and in some cases can affect the outcome. Something needs to be done and fast.

Get used to that style of play, instructions for Seb is no offloads, brough drill into corners, no one take any risks

Agree with all this.

But in the end, it’s far more important to finish eighth than to get to the Cup semi final. Sad, when you look at the history of the Challenge Cup, but nonetheless true.

Cudjoe got a good run out in a game that didn’t really matter. And the coaching team get to wonder why the energy wasn’t there and hopefully put it right.

That’s about all you can say TBH.

If that’s how Woolford wants to play, that’s fine. But he’d better check his contract to see what will happen after he gets the club relegated and loses all his best players for nothing.

Or perhaps he recognises that we have a team full of cloughs/murphys/roberts who are solid players but don’t have a skill set for creative play.
How many offloads went wrong last night-we can’t even pass and catch the ball going by our set completion rate last night.
I reckon he’s got it right! There were Some stupid offload/pass attempts in stupid places. Our kicking game was abysmal-how many 7 tackle sets did we give them!

Jools your point is slightly undermined by fact that the dull, turgid approach to the game last night ended up with a loss to a crap side.

If he plays like that, we’re stuffed

very true all that, we have never been able to manage a game, thats down to brough for me to do that but he just loses his cool when its not going to plan

dont agree with sin binning of him, why wasnt the catalans player also sin binned for a head high on leeming?? broughs reputation maybe the reason why but thats not fair from the ref hewer who i knew likes catalans from previous matches watched with him against us and catalan

well when he does offload theres no one there to take it and often ends in a knock on or us going backwards.

brough was putting high kicks in , dont mind drill to corners if we are controlling the game and winning

back to basics rugby... still a long way to go and i still think we will be in the middle 8's

yep we just dont have the players

thats why the likes of mamo, wakeman and hinchcliffe have to go to allow woolford to bring in his own

the energy was there, but when your tackling big forwards for the most the game that will soon be zapped.....

good kicking game from catalans just kept pinning us back in our half and then we had our own errors on top . truly awful game and one to forget

We play big packs week in week out so shouldn't be a surprise when they come up against one. Catalan's pack is no bigger than Wakeys which we dealt with twice in succession. If anyone from the hierarchy at the Giant's reads this forum then I'll tell you here and now, if we go back to the Rick Stone/Aussie way of playing the game from now till the end of the season then you'll have 2 less season ticket holders from this household. Don't mind losing when you can see the team trying to play a bit , like under Thorman, but no way am I willing to pay to watch 80 minutes of 5 one up drives followed by an iffy kick. Hopefully yesterday's game was a settler for his first game in charge and he'll realise that the team can actually play a bit if he let's them. Next couple of weeks will tell.

It took Thorman a month to persuade the team they could play a bit after Rick Stone’s boredomball.

If Woolford thinks the way to succeed in SL is to coach every last drop of attacking out of them, then we’re headed out of SL and his coaching career won’t last til Christmas

Couldn't agree more with previous two posters and am very concerned with both Thursdays performance and more importantly the press conference that Woolford gave prior to the match

Any time you watch the NRL games featuring the lower ranked teams the commentators talk about getting the basics right. Woolford will look to settle the team be competitive in SL and beat the teams around them . A new coach is in a no win if fans expect the Harlem Globetrotters style play and to hell with the results. If the Giants are lauded for their style of play and they get relegated would he have a job?