Hull 40, Huddersfield Giants 12

Jul 5 2004 By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Gene's effort came after just three minutes to deny Gareth Raynor.

But the former Hull star was to make an even bigger impact on attack five minutes later, helping to create the opening try for Paul White.

Gene's lovely chip over the defence was gathered by Stuart Donlan and the winger drew full-back Shaun Briscoe before feeding the pass to White to finish off.

Unfortunately, he was unable to add the conversion and then, almost immediately from the restart, he was pulled back for a forward pass inside his own half.

From the scrum, Hull whipped the ball across to the left for Raynor to brush past three would-be tacklers to score.

Cooke added the extras and the home side had a lead they were never to lose.

For the remainder of the half it was all Hull, and had it not been for Huddersfield's last-ditch defensive effort the game could have been over as a contest by the break.

As it was, Hull had to settle for two further unconverted tries from Michael Eagar and Peter Lupton and two Cooke penalties to make it 18-4.

Midway through the second half, however, there were genuine hopes of a Giants fightback as they trailed just 24-12.

White reduced the deficit with an early penalty before Ewan Dowes crashed over under the posts for a converted score.

But when prop Gannon took advantage of a mix-up between Best and Raynor to score a try, converted by White, the contest was back in the melting pot.

Unfortunately, in the final quarter, Hull regained the initiative, with Horne, Richard Whiting and Shaun Briscoe scoring further tries to give the final scoreline a look that in the end did little justice to the way Huddersfield had played.

•  Huddersfield's Academy teams experienced mixed fortunes over the weekend.

The Seniors had a comfortably 42-10 triumph at Doncaster, while the Juniors suffered their first defeat of the campaign, going down 24-14 at Salford - full reports tomorrow.