Point thrown away in top-flight classic

Aug 11 2003 By Chris Roberts, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Giants 30 - 30 Widnes. Patched-up side still push for top-six

Even without Costin, March and McNamara, the Giants were soon clicking into gear and made the perfect start.

With just one minute 40 seconds on the clock, Stanley Gene's kick to the corner was fumbled by Stuart Spruce and Marcus St Hilaire pounced to score for Paul White to land the first of his five goals from six attempts.

Gene and Darren Turner were then held up on the line before the Giants doubled their lead in the sixth minute with a belting Hefin O'Hare try.

The flying Welshman did superbly to collect a Jules O'Neill bomb when forced into his own in-goal area.

He then quickly ran the ball for the tap restart on the 20m line, turned on the gas to escape the clutches of Daniel Frame and then outpaced the cover to score by the posts.

With six minutes on the clock, the Giants were in dreamland at 12-0.

Poor defence enabled Adam Hughes to send Paul Devlin over for the first of the Vikings' five tries - all of which were converted by Jules O'Neill - to half the deficit five minutes later.

But within three minutes the lead was back up to 12.

Dan Potter dropped the ball from the restart and from the resulting scrum Gene charged through with embarrassing ease for White to add the extras off the left post.

Julian Bailey was unlucky to have a try disallowed when Jarrod O'Doherty's tryscoring pass was ruled forward moments later.