Angry Huddersfield Giants head coach Paul Anderson has warned his players they’ll take face a few home truths as part of a very uncomfortable
review of yesterday’s 46-26 home defeat to Catalans Dragons.
Huddersfield slumped to their fifth defeat in six Super League XXI starts to slip to second bottom of the top-flight table.
Their cause wasn’t helped by the 49th-minute dismissal of Joe
Wardle for a high tackle on Remi Casty or the loss through injury of Danny Brough and Eorl Crabtree.
But Anderson has refused to blame any of those incidents for a defeat he found ‘embarrassing.’
“If I was to use Joe’s sending-off or the injuries as an excuse, that would just be papering over the cracks,” said Anderson.
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“The simple fact was that this performance was unacceptable.
“I know that, and the players know that. They made that clear to me straight after the game, and Joe’s apologised to his teammates for getting sent-off.
“But that won’t change anything I’ll have to say to the players today.
“The review to this game is going to be very honest. There are going to be some home truths, and some of it is going to be uncomfortable.
“This game is all about attitude and being prepared to work hard for each other in order to gain their rewards.
“We saw very little of that against Catalans, and we certainly don’t want players at this club who aren’t prepared to show that attitude and commitment.
“What we saw a lot of the time out there yesterday was embarrassing, if I’m being honest.
“It’s up to everyone to make sure we do something about it, and as quickly as possible.”
Anderson has also admitted that at first glance Wardle’s sending-off was ‘probably correct’.
But when asked if he thought it was a little unfair his player received the red card when Catalans’ Krisnan Inu was only shown a yellow card for the tackle n Eorl Crabtree that forced the prop’s premature departure, he didn’t disagree.
“You probably could argue that,” added the John Smith’s Stadium boss.
“Eorl definitely wasn’t in a good way after he came off.
“But you wouldn’t expect that to be a case when a player who weighs in at 120kg is dumped to the ground in the manner he was.
“Eorl was up and about and talking the rest of the lads at the end of the game, but we’ll need to take a check on his fitness before we start to play for Wakefield on Friday.”
Brough was withdrawn late in the game after suffering a knee knock, although Anderson did that as a precautionary measure.
“Broughy could have carried on, but the game had gone when he picked up his knock, so there was no point keeping him out there unnecessarily,” he continued.
“It means he should be ready to go on Friday, when it’ll be all about everyone making sure there’s no repeat of what we saw at the weekend.”
