Easter is now out of the way and you find yourself second in the Super League XVI table. Are you happy with that?

It’s obviously been a pretty poor Easter for us, but overall it’s not been a bad start to the season.

After getting back from Catalan Dragons on Sunday lunchtime, we gave the players a couple of days off, because they’ve put in a great effort and have deserved a break.

Had we just been a touch better in France at the weekend, we’d have been coming out of Easter top of the ladder, and there are quite a few clubs who would have liked to have been in a position to say that!

But there’s no question this is a very close competition.

There are three sides on 18 points (us, Warrington and Wigan), one on 17 and three on 15, which underlines that fact.

This clearly shows why you need to be well prepared every week to do well.

If you do lose one or two in a row, it doesn’t seem to affect you too much, but if you string some wins together you have every opportunity of putting yourselves in a very good position.

That’s what we’re obviously all striving to achieve.

Looking back on that narrow 13-12 defeat in France, do you feel you deserved anything from that game?

At the end of the day, we made far too many errors.

But our defence was outstanding. To give them the amount of possession we did inside our own half – they didn’t make a line break all game – and restrict them to 12 points was a great effort, the commitment was terrific.

Unfortunately, we probably saw the reverse effect of all this effort on our attack when we failed to capitalise on the five line breaks we made.

Once, a front-rower turned up, while on another occasion Leroy Cudjoe turned up and ‘scored’ but it was called back for a forward pass.

And three times, no-one turned up on a clean line break when it was just us and the full-back – where were the other people who were supposed to be there at that point? – with the most obvious of which was when Lee Gilmour broke away in the last two minutes and lost the ball on the tryline.

Have you any complaints about the forward pass decision from Kevin Brown for Leroy or Jermaine McGilvary’s effort being ruled out when it was ruled Kev had stripped the ball in a two-man tackle?

Sometimes you get the 50-50 calls, and sometimes you don’t. On this occasion we didn’t.

To be honest, there was very little in the forward pass call, but the thing with this was that we made the break and did the hard work and shouldn’t have given the match officials the opportunity to call us back. If our execution had been better, the pass shouldn’t have even looked forward.

But, as I said, we had several other chances, which we also failed to take.

The lads were clearly gutted to have lost such a close game as this, particularly for the fans who had again turned up in such good numbers. You must have felt for them?

Yes, we did. They were great.

With the game being so close, it was probably a pretty reasonable spectacle, with an exciting ending.

But that probably came as no consolation to those who made the trip.

We’d have obviously loved to have sent them back to England with winning smiles on their faces. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be.

Hopefully, the fans will be smiling again after winning at Batley in the Challenge Cup on Sunday. How much do you want to win this famous competition?

You obviously want to do as well as you can in both competitions, the Challenge Cup and Super League.

The experience of going to Wembley a couple of years ago was something very special and we’d love to go back in 2011 – and obviously win it this time!

I don’t think there’s a team in Super League that doesn’t want to get to Wembley.

It’s surely a dream for everyone.

Finally, you were able to celebrate the birth of your first son, Jaxson, over Easter. The big question is will he played rugby league for England or Australia when he’s older?

I’m not sure, to be honest.

But what I do know is (Giants managing director) Richard Thewlis is pretty happy, because he says he’s an off-quota player!

But I’m not sure the missus is too keen on Jaxson playing rugby. She’s not quite as much into the game as myself.

She enjoys watching it, but I’m not sure she’d enjoy seeing her own son playing it.

Yet whether he plays the game or not, it’s good to have some male company in the Brown house now (he already has three daughters) and it’ll be good when he starts talking and can fight my corner!