Chris Thorman wants better game management when the Huddersfield Giants tackle Salford Red Devils on Sunday.
It’s a second successive John Smith’s Stadium outing for the interim head coach and his second-bottom side, following the 40-28 defeat to Castleford Tigers.
In the clash against Daryl Powell’s men, the Giants rallied from being 28-6 down at half time to get within eight points at one stage.
But even though Thorman was delighted with the second-half showing – having berated his team at the break – he believes the Giants need to take better control of their own destiny when Ian Watson’s side head over the Pennines.
According to the boss, they need only look at what happened against Cas to realise the point.
“I still thought we mis-managed that second half,” said Thorman, who is checking on the fitness of injury victims Michael Lawrence and Ukuma Ta’ai.
“I will never cut their arms off for wanting to play, but there is a balance and there are fine margins at this level, where we maybe didn’t have the ball for a couple of sets and we still wanted to chance our arm – after doing the hard work and getting back in the arm-wrestle.
“Just there, I needed my ball players to take over and kind of show a little bit of initiative and grab the game by the scruff of the neck.
“I needed them to think ‘hang on a second, we need to complete this next set’, and I thought if we had completed two or three sets where we tried to chance our arm a little bit too much then I honestly thought the result could have even gone the other way.”
What added to Thorman’s frustration was that once the Giants got the bit between their teeth, after his hairdryer treatment, they produced some excellent attacks to carve through the Cas defence – something he wants to see replicated from the start against Salford.
“From the energy battle, I could easily see how it was lost in the first half - they had 30 more play of the balls than we did,” he explained.
“But they showed that it doesn’t matter what the stats are, if you come out with energy you can get yourself back in the game.
“We executed some offensive shape which we haven’t in a long time, and that’s pleasing.”
