Giants coach Nathan Brown Q&A

Feb 26 2009 by Chris Roberts, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

New Huddersfield Giants chief Nathan Brown answers the questions of the day put to him by Examiner Rugby League writer Chris Roberts.

AFTER what was an excellent pre-season and a superb win at Catalans Dragons, do you still feel you’re heading in the right direction after losing to St Helens?

I do feel we’re progressing, but to what extent we’ll have to wait and see.

I think we’ll have to see how we respond to this defeat against St Helens when we take to the field at Bradford tomorrow night.

We go from playing one very good team to another with a very short turnaround, and if we can respond positively with a good performance against the Bulls I think I’ll get far more of an indication as to how far off the top teams we actually are.

Although we were obviously very disappointed to lose last weekend – at the end of the day no-one likes to lose – there were one or two positives to take from the contest.

I thought the fact we had a bad period and went 12-0 behind but were good enough to hang in there and in the second half got ourselves in a position to draw level is something to build on.

IS it fair to say referee Thierry Alibert did you few favours?

Personally, I thought the referee did alright.

Like anyone else, he did make the odd mistake, but I thought overall he handled it well and didn’t referee the game any different for us than he did for them.

In my opinion, it was blokes like Sean Long and Leon Pryce who didn’t do us any favours!

We certainly couldn’t hold the referee responsible for that.

That’s what we need to focus on and not the referee’s performance.

So how highly do you rate Bradford Bulls?

As I said, they are a good side and have been one of the best in Super League for some time now.

You know when you play them you’ll be up against a big, formidable side, and that’s what we’re preparing to face tomorrow.

As in most games, winning the battle in the forwards is crucial and this game is certainly no exception.

They may have lost a couple of quality back-rowers in Solomona and Langley, but they’ve got a fair bit of depth in their pack and still have a quality back three in Menzies, Morrison and Cook.

Hopefully, we’ll win that key battle, because I felt we struggled at times in that area last weekend.

I thought our pack was excellent in the two trial games and in the win at Catalans.

But I thought we struggled at times against St Helens, especially in trying to handle Fa’asavalu off the bench and Puletua.