AS far as Giants fans are concerned, the outcome of Super League XIV is either a glass half empty or a glass half full.
For some a Wembley final and third in the table has given them a season to remember fondly after 40-odd years of hurt.
For others the fact that the Challenge Cup final brought defeat and the play-offs produced a whimper rather than a bang to the end of the campaign rankles.
I would have to side with the former camp, but I can understand the feelings of those who – to employ a tennis term that was often used of Tim Henman – felt that the Giants ‘choked’ when the big tests arrived.
But as with all fanatical followers of sport (so that is just about anyone who cares about their team in whatever the game) there is a large amount of introspection about these issues.
Sometimes it takes others to open our eyes to just what a team has achieved – for the Giants the revelation came in abundance at Monday’s Man of Steel awards.
Previous flirtations with the Challenge Cup final and the play-offs in the last three years have merely been markers along the way as the Giants have made steady progress – and those outside the area barely batted an eye.
But this season has seen the club make an impact that has made watchers of the 13-a-side code across the M62 corridor and beyond sit up and take notice.
Totally deserved is Brett Hodgson’s top player award – few players over recent seasons have had that kind of level of inspiration in such a short space of time.
Equally Nathan Brown’s coaching award, as he has started his way along the trail to realising the dream in an understated yet emphatic style.
And it helps hugely that these two are probably among the most likeable guys you could meet in any sport.
But the Club of the Year award is really the icing on the cake because that has shown how the Giants have gone about ensuring they get the best out of their talent whether they be imports or local youngsters – and irrespective of any perceived place in the pecking order.
So whether you are a Giants fan who has a pot half empty or a pot half full – the difference this time is that the outside world are now taking you seriously.
Next season will be the one where Huddersfield prove, to paraphrase Skinner and Baddiel, if rugby league is coming home!
ISN’T modern technology a wonderful thing.
England’s game against the Ukraine tomorrow is available only on the internet and, aside from a handful of people who actually can stand sitting for 90 minutes in front of a computer screen and have the money to spend in this manner, the rest of us will be transported back to the 1950s.
I’m sorry folks but we are all going to have to huddle around the wireless and take in our national side in action away from old Blighty just like we did when Sir Stanley Matthews lacked a knighthood and had the ‘twinkliest’ pair of feet on the planet.
So my plea to the BBC Five Live team who will be out there beyond the ‘Iron Curtain’ is to enter into the spirit of this step back in time.
Alan Green for a start can drop the Irish lilt and take on the character of Harry Enfield’s comic creation Mr Cholmondley-Warner and explain the game in patronising, painstaking detail to sidekick Grayson (who hopefully will be a top pundit like Graham Taylor or Jimmy Armfield).
Also they could probably bring back the voice in the background that calmly delivers the phrase ‘E3’ or ‘A2’ as they used to when a grid was printed in the Radio Times to show what area of the pitch the ball was in (though I’m led to believe trying to play battleships while listening to the match could cause significant confusion).
So thank you to Setanta and ‘big money’ television (where money seems to be the only issue) for allowing us to start using our minds and having to imagine just what is happening on the pitch.
I for one will be bedecked in my tweeds, leaning on the mantlepiece, smoking a pipe and listening to the Bakelite hoping that those fine chaps such as Steven Gerrard and Rio (where on earth do they get these names these days!) Ferdinand can get the better of those Cossack types.
