Huddersfield Giants head coach Simon Woolford is backing Leroy Cudjoe to get “better and better” now he has made his long-awaited return from injury.

The 30-year-old club captain scored the Giants’ only try in the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup defeat by Catalans Dragons – his first appearance in nine months following knee surgery.

Cudjoe is now with Woolford’s squad preparing for Friday night’s trip to Leeds Rhinos in the Betfred Super League.

“I thought Leroy was really good (against Catalans),” said Woolford.

“He has been medically fit for a couple of weeks and it’s just about Leroy getting more training under his belt and gaining confidence to come out and perform.

“Leroy is a great player and he’s been a great player for a long time.

Leroy Cudjoe tries to find a way through the Dragons defence

“He didn’t want to come back and feel like he was short of a gallop, so he took another week or two to get right and now I think he will only get better and better.”

Woolford has stressed the Giants need to cut out the errors which proved so costly in their 20-6 home defeat to Catalans.

“We didn’t learn from the first half,” said the coach.

“Every time we got down their end of the field and looked like we were going to strike, we came up with an error and panicked.

“We need to fix that, because we need the execution.

We had 14 errors and 11 penalties against us and you are not going to win a game of footy with statistics like that.

“Passes didn’t to their intended targets and we had a couple of errors in contact, too, which was disappointing.”

On what lies ahead, Woolford added: “It takes time.

“We’ve made some big steps over the last month but there’s certainly a long way to go.

“There were some guys who didn’t have their best games (in the Cup) but that’s footy.

“We need to make sure we don’t make the same errors again this week.”