That's what I was waiting for our young forwards to prove they could handle SL intensity.

What I saw before last weekend I was thinking they would be released and end up in the championship.

I don't believe any Giants fan wanted them to lose on Friday night, or any other night. Because of your opinions on the season and performances so far, that you have had the nerve to post, you are not a true fan" for some people it seems" no matter how much you have put into the club. As far as I'm concerned you are entitled to post your opinions for or against on any aspect of the club.

Friday night was a revelation after what we have been getting, It was certainly a good one too win, and might be the start of a good spell, Don't know what brought about the change but hope it keeps going, we shall see at Wigan.
I don't mind a loss if the effort is there, we usually play well against Wigan win or lose so who knows.

what brought about the change was completing sets and cutting down the errors which meant we had more energy in the tank too going into the last quarter of which we had been losing most games.

now they will realise it works when they do this!

I can see how it will have looked a bit like that lately, I haven't got involved about conditioning and bus riding myself, but to be honest they are I expect opinions and may well have some relevance to team moral, but I wouldn't argue that .

My own views are more about the PA discussion I am not taken by him as a coach, that's just my opinion, but if anyone asks me for evidence, I will say, look at our league position, Look at the quality of game we played for most of last season, tell me where our International standard players have gone.
All that will be washed over as irrelevant by a snowstorm of bad luck stories from some.

I have given PA plenty of credit for league position " based upon good defence " and I hope we get it back, He has rightly had lots of credit for the success we have had in finishing amongst the so called big boys, so is he now immune from any blame now we are nowhere.
I am not over bothered about league position unless we win the big one, I am more bothered about what we play like and what we look like on the field , particularly on TV.

But you are right we do all want the same thing, despite what some say, we just have different views about how to get there, but that doesn't mean anything for me, other than we agree to disagree

It may well be something just that simple, I really hope they do the same at Wigan, I don't care if we lose, " we are probably middle 8 now anyway ". but if they can get into their stride it can be nothing but good.

And controlling the ruck, rather than losing the floor and scrambling back to get onside every time!

After being away on hols for 4 games before last Friday so not seeing any of those games, just reading the reports it did appear that we were folding in the last 10 minutes so I paid particular attention to the players fitness levels on Friday.
The only 2 things that stood out to me were, Ukuma who I know is not an 80 minute player, but he was clearly treading water for 5-10 minutes before he went off injured. This needs to be managed better and he should have been given a rest before the injury.
The other was Craig Huby, again I understand that he has just come back from injury and obviously I don't know what training he was doing during his time injured but he is clearly not very fit. He was shot at about 10 minutes and made it obvious when he kicked the ball into the crowd after we had forced an error and received a scrum. Another player, I think it was Woody rushed to get it so we could get on with the Scrum. Again I can see that this can be managed a bit better until he regains fitness, but I can also see the need for Huby to play longer minutes so I guess it's a hard decision for PA in terms of the game and I am only commenting on fitness levels.

I agree with most of your post. The reactions both to criticism and to last Friday's result to me are further indicators of our mentality of fans, which i believe also is one shared by the club. Because of our quick rise from the basement club of the RL in the 80's to superleague whipping boys in the noughties, and finally to contenders over the last 5 years our expectations are lower than other clubs with squads of similar standards. The fact is we HAVE underachieved over the last 5 years considering the strength of our squad during that period, but because we are always comparing with what came before we have a 'we are lucky even to be here' mentality which is holding the club back. Am i glad we won on Friday , of course, is a little bit of me annoyed that maybe if we had lost a few more we might have changed the coach.. honestly, yes. We now seem eternally grateful that *maybe* we wont be in the million pound playoff match... wow.

Fact is, we needed to be written off for a game before we could finally pull together a performance. Once the pressure was off (i.e. we were given no chance of winning top v bottom, underdog mentality) we could finally find the composure to not completely fold at the end of the match like we have been doing in all previous matches this year. In all those matches we lost in the last ten minutes, continually dropping the ball, bombing chances or letting in soft tries. Could PA change this mentality (the same mentality that cost us in playoff games time after time after time btw), no. It took an external factor to do this, as has often been the case for us, our small club mentality of a 'giantkilling' act needed to kick in mentally for us to do this.

I know i will get slated for my opinions, and that's fine, but at least it gives some people something to think about. Until we get a coach/management who can go about changing this smallclub mentality and make us BELIEVE we deserve to be where we have been over the last few years we will not progress. There's one good thing at least we wont have to sit through more cringeworthy capitulations in the playoffs this year, because i think we have all seen quite enough of that. We can continue to celebrate the hub-cap, and agree that it was a massive achievement 'because of where we used to be'. We need a total change of mentality that concentrates on the strength of our current squad and not an ingrained idea of our place in the RL pecking order as a yardstick for measuring success.

Huby has already said that he isn't quite match fit yet. He probably missed a large chunk of preseason due to all the shenanigans just before Christmas and then had surgery. I disagree that taai isn't an 80 minute player- he's capable of it he's certainly capable of 60 minutes. Look at how much work taai puts in- consistently one of our top tacklers and carriers of the ball. He's not the machine Lawrence is but he's no slouch!

I don't argue fitness with anyone, for the simple reason you can't always tell ( Dean Hanger used to walk on the field like a cripple sometimes ) I can see things being difficult for Huby but to be fair I think he is getting back to something like, Last weeks result may do wonders we shall see at Wigan, There is no shame in losing to me, if they give it their best shot and play for each other.

If we are honest Huby has not been as good as I expected him to be when we signed him.

He was one of the best off loaders in the game at Cas, maybe we have toned down that part of his game, who knows, as we seem to have done that with Eorl too, but neither of them have the go forward Sam Rapira has as he comes on to the ball much faster and it's a puzzle why we are not making more of the off loading part of Huby's game.

We have a chance at Wigan if we put in the effort cut out the penalties and mistakes like we did on Friday if we do that and they play better and win I for one will have no complaints.

yeh when huby kicked that ball into touch i wasnt happy with that, like you was saying is he knackered or what! we had just had the ball from drop outs i dont know how many times

What about the Huby offload at Hull that ended up freeing Murphy and Ormsby to combine for a first half try.

People keep putting this myth on here about this great offloading game Huby had at Cas. In his first season at the Giants he offloaded more than he did in any of his three previous seasons at Cas.

huby is a ball playing forward abit like danny sculthorpe, he has been showing it since he has comeback too, will only get better with the plays the more game time he gets