It was bad for Huddersfield at Otley a fortnight ago.
It was even worse at Stockport at the weekend.
Their recent 47-7 National II North thrashing to their West Yorkshire rivals was one that the men from Lockwood Park found hard to stomach.
But it was nothing compared with the gut-wrenching feeling they experienced after losing 27-18 to a Stockport side who went into the game rock bottom of the table with nine straight defeats.
In contrast, Huddersfield were comfortably placed in mid-table with four wins and a draw from their opening nine fixtures, and fresh from a convincing home win over Broadstreet the week before.
Everything pointed, therefore, to a straightforward away win.
How wrong such a prediction could be!
The opening exchanges suggested everything was going according to form, with Chris Bell slotting over two penalties in the first eight minutes to underline the visitors’ initial supremacy.
Huddersfield were also close to crossing for a fifth-minute try, but Mike Clarke was unable to find the decisive scoring pass after carving the hosts apart with ease.
At that stage the only real debate looked to be over the margin of the Huddersfield win.
But events took a dramatic turn immediately after Bell’s second strike.
From the restart, the visitors made a mess of gaining possession, Stockport sniffed a chance and Ben Marsland crashed over on his side’s first attack.
Mark Edwards added the conversion, and in the blink of an eye everything had changed. All of a sudden, the visitors lost their shape and cohesion – although their cause to regroup wasn’t helped by the refereeing of Will Halford, who perhaps had some sympathy for Stockport’s awful start to the campaign. When it came to 50-50 calls, they all went the one way.
With everything going against them, Huddersfield’s challenge had virtually disappeared by half-time as they found themselves 27-6 behind after a horrific half hour.
Soft tries from George Smith and Joe Cantwell, and four goals from Edwards summed up a nightmare spell, with the visitors suffering the ultimate punishment for such a slack spell.
Admittedly, they were the better side in the second half and grabbed two tries through Tom Bills and player-coach Gareth Lewis and a Bell conversion.
But the extremely harsh 75th-minute sin-binning of Richard Brown for allegedly raising a foot in the ruck summed up Huddersfield’s frustration and finally sealed their fate.
It was an awful end to an awful day.
Stockport: J Edwards; Tenucci, Platt-Hughes, Anthony, Fletcher; Smith, M Edwards; Fuller, Millea, Mitchell, Eccles, C Hibbs, Marsland, Baldwin, Green. Subs: Graham, K Hibbs, Cantwell, Street, Roddy.
Huddersfield: Bell; Hodgson, Mitchell, Owen, Clarke; Hinchliffe, Jeffrey; Purcell, Thornton, Sanderson, Thompson, Rhodes, Malthouse, Hoyle, Sharpe. Subs: Bills, Lewis, Brown, Walker, Battye.
