Pete Barrow: With few expectations Giants can upset the odds again

Sep 18 2009 by Peter Barrow, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Pete Barrow: With few expectations Giants can upset the odds again

JUST a quick message for the Giants – guys there’s no pressure!

Following Sunday’s 48-16 demolition of Wigan Warriors there was some discussion of what the play-offs (and indeed a long debate on how the series works) would hold for Huddersfield.

However, one of my claret and gold acquaintances just sat there with a fixed grin on his face and said: “I’ve followed them for years and this season I have been to Wembley and we have finished third in the league – it’s the best I’ve known so I don’t care what happens in the play-offs.”

His sentiments may well echo those of many Giants fans who, with memories of the fallow years at Fartown, are just feeling like pigs rolling in golden muck at the moment.

However, there is no doubt coach Nathan Brown will ensure that his players are feeling that it is a job half done and a place in the grand final at Old Trafford is very much a realistic aim.

While wary of falling into the throwing stones in glasshouses syndrome, just to make my point I will run over the pre-season musings of Daily Mail rugby league writer Richard Bott.

Gamely making his predictions for the Super League XIV season he correctly identified Leeds and Saints as the top two clubs and Celtic Crusaders as the wooden-spoonists.

Not rocket science, but his failure to nail a single other position correctly perhaps says more about the way the balance of power in the game is changing than the merits of his attempts at prophecy.

As for the Giants, well the man from the Mail pegged them for 10th place.

In mitigation he was looking at a coach untried in this country in his first season in charge of a side that had failed to kick on from previous campaigns.

However, the Giants – along with the likes of Wakefield and Hull KR – have turned many pundits pre-competition predictions to meaningless dust.

And given what happened in the Challenge Cup, who is to say the grand final might for once not be contested by the usual suspects.

THE excuse that inappropriate actions on the field of play can be glossed over by the phrase ‘it was in the heat of the moment’ really should not cut any ice.

It was the ready fall-back for Manchester City’s new goal machine Emmanuel Adebayor as he produced an instant apology for his outrageous goal celebration as the Blues beat Arsenal 4-2 at Eastlands.