RICK STONE tasted victory for the first time as Giants coach as his side strolled almost effortlessly to a 62-16 Middle 8s victory over outclassed Featherstone Rovers.
After watching his side suffer Super League defeats against St Helens and Warrington and a Super 8s Qualifying opening loss at Salford Red Devils , the Stone Age finally erupted into life to put their bid for Super League survival back on track.
Credit has to go to Championship club Featherstone for never refusing to give up.
But they were simply no match for the Giants, who were far too strong and skilful for Rovers from start to finish.
The result may have been widely predicted, but the confidence this success should give Huddersfield ahead of next week’s tricky trip to Batley shouldn’t be underestimated.
By half-time, the Giants were in complete control, opening up a commanding 28-6 lead.
In fact, the hosts were on top from the opening whistle, with Featherstone restricted to very rare excursions into their opponents’ 20.
All credit to Rovers for making the most of one of their scarce chances as John Davies crossed in the 24th minute on the back of two cheap penalties for Kyle Briggs to add the conversion.
That made it 12-6 at the time and did make it interesting for a few minutes at least. But for the rest of the half it was men v boys, with the Giants bossing the contest at every turn.
The foundations for their big first-half advantage were laid in the opening exchanges, with Leroy Cudjoe and Michael Lawrence crossing the Featherstone line but, after knock-ons in the build-up, while Ryan Hinchcliffe was held up over the line.
Those early near-misses were, however, forgotten by the 14th minute when the pressure finally told and Lawrence plunged over after collecting Ryan Brierley’s long pass, and Jamie Ellis landed the first of his four first-half conversions.
And five minutes later the lead was doubled when the impressive Roberts collected 15m out and showed neat footwork to weave his way over.
The Davies’ score did bring the visitors some respite.
But in the final eighth minutes the Giants rammed home their advantage with three further scores.
Gene Ormsby set the ball rolling by finishing strongly in the corner before Brierley took advantage of a loose ball in the Featherstone in-goal area to touch down for the softest of tries.
And two minutes before the break, Roberts outjumped the Rovers defence from an Ellis kick to grab his second.
Good Featherstone defence denied Nathan Mason, Joe Wardle and Kyle Wood at the start of the second period.
Yet that only delayed the inevitable as Ukuma Ta’ai plunged over from acting half on the sixth tackle and then Wood darted over, also from dummy half, with the minimum of fuss, to make it 38-6 after 51 minutes.
With the game already over, the Giants appeared to switch off, giving Luke Briscoe the chance to score the visitors’ second try in the corner to reduce the deficit to 28 points on the hour.
Fortunately, normal service was resumed pretty quickly, thanks to Wood’s second dummy-half dart from close range to bring up the 40-point mark with 15 minutes remaining.
Ian Hardman showed all his St Helens Super League experience to find a way over in the 68th minute as Featherstone refused to wave the white flag.
Yet once again the Giants wasted little time finding a response as Brierley followed up a strong Wardle midfield burst to cross under the posts for Ellis to bring up the half-century for his side.
Moments later Ta’ai was following Wardle’s lead to show his strength to power over from 15m, and Ellis’s eighth goal took the gap up to 40 points.
The Huddersfield total then very quickly passed the 60 mark as Brierley raced away and fed Hinchcliffe to stroll over and round off a very comfortable afternoon’s work.
