Giants boss Nathan Brown's column: Consolidation is key

Jul 16 2009 by Chris Roberts, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

So, was the victory over Harlequins a classic case of the result being far more important than the actual performance?

You obviously always want to perform well if you can, but that doesn’t always happen.

But the fact we were pretty average and won shows that we’re continuing to improve, if that makes sense.

I believe it’s the sign of a good side if you are capable of securing a victory when you’re not playing at your best. I think it shows we’re a good side, but not a great side.

Do you feel there were a number of signs against Quins to suggest Brett Hodgson is getting back to his best form?

There’s no doubt that after such a magnificent start for us he had a bit of a down patch.

That coincided with him picking up a couple of injuries and not playing as much as he, and us, would have liked.

But over the past couple of weeks he’s building up to a good performance, and there was no doubt he was very solid last weekend.

However, the players who really caught my eye were Leroy (Cudjoe) and Bruno (Michael Lawrence) down our right side. These two youngsters are improving all the time.

On top of that, I also thought Foey (David Faiumu) was good and is definitely coming along a lot.

I was also very impressed with Darrell Griffin, who I felt had his best game for us.

Although you weren’t over-impressed by the performance, were you also concerned about the number of penalties you were conceding midway through the second half?

It goes without saying that you never like being penalised, whether the penalties are right or wrong.

And I think a fair few of those penalties were conceded because we weren’t at our best.

I thought one of the problems we faced at Harlequins was that they probably won the forward battle and we conceded penalties for offside and at the ruck because the opposition dominated us.

There were times during those soft periods for us when we didn’t put in the effort to get back onside and were slow at the ruck. That was pretty disappointing.