How would you describe the mood ahead of tomorrow night’s trip to St Helens?

Pretty positive.

With the State of Origin series in Australia coming up, we’re about to face our own Origin series with this game against Saints, followed by the fixtures at home to Wigan and away at Leeds.

And they’re the sort of games we need, and ones we’re looking forward to.

Against Bradford Bulls last weekend we lacked intensity in what we did and didn’t play with enough energy in that first half. That’s something we can’t afford to do over the next few weeks.

But I’m confident there won’t be a repeat in the games ahead.

We’ve gone into our recent fixtures with everyone expecting us to win, and we have done what’s required to get the right result.

We know we’re a good team, and we’ve saved some of our best performances for the games against the sides at the top (in the current campaign the Giants have won at Wigan, drawn at home to Leeds and suffered their controversial one-point Challenge Cup defeat to Saints when they were at the height of their powers a couple of months ago).

What we need to start doing – as well as ‘upping’ our intensity – is control the ball a lot better and make sure our attention to detail improves. We’ve also got to show a general improvement in our defence, because the ease at which Bradford scored their tries and were able to get to our tryline was also very disappointing.

Will you be travelling to Langtree Park with the squad in good shape?

It’s not looking too bad at all.

We’re hopeful everyone who featured against Bradford at Magic Weekend will be available, while we’re also hoping Jermaine McGillvary will be back.

Jerry obviously missed out last weekend with the ankle injury he suffered at London Broncos the week before, bur he is progressing well.

We’ll take a final decision on his fitness later today, just like we will with Jodie Broughton.

He came off during the second half against the Bulls with a bit of a groin issue.

He did it when he stubbed his foot in the process of preventing a Bradford try early in the second half. When he kicked the ball out, he also kicked the ground and the poor Bulls bloke, but came off slightly the worse.

But if we don’t think either of them will be right, then we won’t risk them.

That’s because we’ve got Ben Blackmore waiting in the wings, if required. Ben’s had to be really patient this year after having a great pre-season, when he had a big dig and showed magnificent attitude and effort.

At the moment, however, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Talking of talented young players and injuries, what’s the latest news of the ankle injury Jake Connor suffered at London?

Things don’t look too bad.

We’ll be leaving a decision over whether he needs surgery until the start of next week.

It’s really just playing the waiting game.

You’ve also got Michael Lawrence and Chris Bailey available to play after they missed out at Magic. How tough a call was it to do that?

Very tough indeed.

They’ve both been great for us this year, and they could count themselves a little unlucky not to feature.

But our thinking for this particular match was to pick as big a team as we possibly could.

I know Bruno and Bails aren’t exactly small, but we decided to go with three genuine front-rowers (Crabtree, Kopczak and Mullally) and Larne Patrick, who’s very, very direct.

Furthermore, we also felt Bruno and Bails would benefit from a break at this stage.

You’re clearly not short of options in the pack, especially now Brett Ferres is back following his five-game suspension. How important is his return?

To get any player back of Brett’s ability is a tremendous boost.

He’s a world-class player and we’re very fortunate he’s in our team.

He’s one of the players that if you’ve not got him, you still go looking for him.

And we also know he’s only going to get better, because this is effectively the start of his season.

Fellow back-row forward Ukuma Ta’ai is also contributing a lot more positively to the side. What’s been the difference between now and his performances of a couple of months ago?

His performances are getting better and becoming more consistent, but he does still remain a frustrating player at times.

He’s one of those players who does it, then he doesn’t do it and then he does it again.

But he’s now definitely running a lot harder and getting his rewards on the back of it.

Unfortunately, he’s still got those moments in his game when he feels compelled to come up with an offload when he shouldn’t. He did one again against the Bulls on Sunday.

That once again showed that he still needs to do better.

Finally. Has Joe Wardle managed to catch up on his sleep after becoming a dad in the early hours of Sunday’s game?

Hopefully, he’ll have done it by now.

But the events of early Sunday morning meant I’ve had to catch on my sleep, too!

Joe got in touch with me at 12.45am to say he was taken Siobahn into hospital, and he then woke me up at five to tell me she’s given birth to their baby boy.

I told him to get home as quickly as possible and get some sleep, which I assume he did.

But it did mean he did it tough during the game, although it was pretty hard to tell.

He produced another solid game and marked a big day in his life with our first try, hence the cradling celebration, He obviously thinks he’s Romario now, doesn’t he?!

But even though he did disrupt my sleep, it’s still congratulations all round to the Wardle family.

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