The Giants chief answers the questions put by Examiner RL writer Chris Roberts

You’ve just announced the signing for next season of Anthony Mullally from Widnes. Has that given everyone at the club a timely lift?

We’re certainly delighted to have secured his services for the next three years, that’s for sure.

But, as you say, that’s for next season. I think we’ve got one or two things on our mind right now before we start to think about Anthony arriving in November!

Having said that, we do regard Anthony as a very good signing.

He’s been on my personal radar for a quite a while now, and I’m really pleased he’s chosen to come to us.

The year in spent at Brisbane Broncos – in 2011 – will have done him a lot of good and he started this season really strongly at Widnes.

I’ve had my eye on him because he’s big, strong, aggressive and British, which fits into what we’re trying to do here.

He’s got an awful lot of ability and he’s going to be a good – and big! – fit for us in the future.

But now the signing’s been confirmed, is it a case of focusing 100% on the short term?

Most definitely.

There are a lot of things that need to be addressed in regard to the rest of this season.

We clearly let ourselves down at Saints at the weekend in not one, two, three or four, but in many, many, many areas.

And, as a result, we’ve had some real, honest things happen since then.

One or two things have come out in the open in relation to what’s expected and what’s not.

Unfortunately, there was an element the other day of people who went out there and didn’t try, and that’s simply not acceptable.

Whether they know they were trying or not, that’s another thing, because you can sometimes mask that you think you’re trying when in reality you’re not.

But we’ve practiced well since then, so hopefully it’ll be a different story next time around.

The personal pride of the players once again appeared to have been dented. Could getting that pride back hold the key to an upturn in fortunes?

Getting the personal pride back is clearly something I can’t control. That’s up to the players themselves.

All I can do is put some things in place and see them done in practice so they can try and help us wins games again.

As coaching staff, we’ve highlighted some really basic things where we’re letting ourselves down.

May be, over the past couple of weeks, I may as a coach myself let the players down by concentrating on the big-picture stuff rather that the finer detail.

Whatever position you find yourself in, you shouldn’t lose track of the small things in the game, which we may unfortunately have done in recent weeks.

So I’ll take my share of the responsibility there.

But we’ve all got to share some responsibility for the way things have gone, and we also have a collective responsibility to work together to make sure our fortunes change.