Related content

IN-FORM Darrell Griffin has paid tribute to his Giants teammates for helping him make such a positive impact to the side.

The 29-year-old England prop maintained his current rich vein of form with a Carnegie man-of-the-match performance in yesterday’s 30-16 home fifth-round Challenge Cup triumph over Catalan Dragons.

After laying the foundations with a rock-solid opening spell, Griffin then returned to action in the second half to score a vitally-important 70th-minute try.

But even though the effort was all his own work close to the line, the front-rower was not prepared to take all of the credit.

“There were just two points in it at the time, so to score the try when I did was pretty important,” said Griffin.

“I suppose that was also a factor in me winning the man-of-the-match award.

“It’s always nice to gain this sort of recognition and, on the whole, I was happy with the way I went, although there were a couple of things on defence that weren’t that great.

“But, overall, I feel I’m playing fairly well at the moment, although it helps when you’re playing in such a good team.

“You know that if everyone else around you is playing well, your own confidence will be higher and you can give more to the side.

“And that was certainly the case in the second half of this game.

“We struggled a bit in the opening half, but Browny said at half-time that the ball needed to get to the big blokes a lot earlier, and that seemed to pay off.

“In that second half, I did think Eorl, Keith and me did have some joy.”

Griffin admitted the blustery conditions made the game difficult to play.

But he was refusing to use that as an excuse for the way his side played at times.

“It was bad out there, but it was the same for both sides,” he added.

“But full credit to Catalan. They probably stuck to their script in the conditions a bit better, while we were guilty of overplaying.

“Fortunately, that was eventually put right.”