It’s been a disappointing week, both results-wise and injury-wise. First of all, how worrying is the injury situation?

It’s obviously not looking too good at the moment.

The David Fa’alogo situation, in particular, is very frustrating and I think everyone is feeling for him right now. He’s now facing another couple of months on the sidelines, and that’s going to be tough for him.

The main issue regarding his hamstring injury is trying to get to the bottom of why he’s suffered a recurrence so soon after returning. Things like that shouldn’t be happening.

But it’s not just Dave’s injury that’s a real concern.

Martin Aspinwall just doesn’t seem to be improving from his groin injury and Paul Whatuira is the same with his hamstring injury, so they’re both out indefinitely.

Andy Raleigh is out for six more weeks with a bulging disc in his neck, while Eorl Crabtree is out for a month and Jermaine McGillvary will sit this weekend out after having a bit of a sleep (he was knocked out) in the second half against St Helens.

You obviously lost Eorl, Dave and Jermaine during last Friday’s game. How much did that affect you?

Losing three blokes like that is never going to help your chances of winning.

But we can’t use that as an excuse for losing the game.

At the end of the day, we just fell short in a reasonably close game and only have ourselves to blame.

We conceded some soft tries and didn’t really offer enough on attack when we had the opportunity.

Against Saints, our edge defence was good, but our middle was poor.

In other weeks, our middle has been good and our edge has been poor, which once again shows that we’re just not being consistent enough across the board.

We really should be striving to make sure we end this pattern of having some players up there and some others down there in almost every game we play.

If everyone played far more consistently, we would obviously do much better.

When you saw the Saints’ line-up and the fact they were lacking a number of senior players, did you feel you were in with a great chance?

We like to feel we’re going to do well, whoever we play and whatever their line-up.

But last Friday we started slowly and within almost no time at all found ourselves 16-6 behind, so we were up against it.

But we then got ourselves back into the contest at 16-16 and started to show exactly what we can do when we actually control the ball and get ourselves into good field position.

Unfortunately, however, we again completed at about 60% and you’re not going to beat anyone with a completion rate like that, not even against a side that’s at the bottom of the ladder, and certainly not against such a great attacking side as St Helens.

Yes, they did have some decent players unavailable, but they were still able to field a very decent side. They weren’t exactly lacking in players with experience at the very highest level.

Yet this was still a very disappointing result.

One positive last week was Simon Finnigan’s return to action in the Under 20s following neck and surgery at the end of last season. You must be pleased about that.

Yes, definitely.

It’s been a tough time for Finny and it was good to see him back out there.

He was understandably a bit sore for a few days after the game, but the main thing is that his shoulder and neck weren’t causing him any problems and that was obviously crucial.

The key now is for him to build up his match fitness and get back onto a Super League field.

After the time he’s had, I think everyone will be delighted for him when that happens.

Finally, what did you think of Kevin Brown’s performance for England against France.

He did a good job, which we always expected.

Kev is an outstanding player and, as I said last week, one of his many qualities is that he can make the players around him look good.

That’s something he’s now done on an international stage as well as for the Giants.

He showed something that we always knew, that he has what it takes to do an excellent job for his country.