Luke Robinson admits relief as Huddersfield claim first home win of season
George Flanagan scored 12 points, including two tries, as the Giants claimed a deserved 18-6 success at the Accu Stadium.
Huddersfield coach Luke Robinson admitted his relief after his side finally secured their first home win of the season at the expense of Catalans Dragons on Saturday.
Impressive youngster George Flanagan scored 12 points, including two tries, as the Giants claimed a deserved 18-6 success at the Accu Stadium.
It has been a dismal season for the club but, with what was their fifth victory overall in the Betfred Super League and a second in succession, Robinson can finally see reason for optimism.
He said: "I must be the only coach that didn't really want to play at home with the form that we've had over the last 18 months, two years, but hopefully that's the monkey off our back.
"We'd like to finish with a bit of a flurry, so it's great to win at home, great to give the loyal fans something to sing about.
"When you play at home, it should be a bit of a fortress where teams don't want to come and where we get wins, but it's not been the case. Hopefully we can change that.
"What we're really proud of most of all is that in the first 10-15 minutes they had the majority of the ball and it would have been very easy for us to fold, but we stuck at it. We played tough rugby.
"We stemmed the tide and after that, if I'm honest, I thought we had full control of the game.
"There's been a lot of games this year where we've been winning and I've been extremely nervous, but I wasn't today. There wasn't one part of me nervous."
Jacob Gagai also scored for the Giants with an interception try but it was 20-year-old Flanagan, playing at full-back, who stole the show.
Robinson said: "George is a fabulous young player, he's great. He's getting better and better each and every week."
Catalans have also endured a troubled campaign and the French outfit have won just once in 10 games since Joel Tomkins succeeded the sacked Steve McNamara as coach.
They had a good spell early in the second half when Bayley Sironen touched down after returning from a costly spell in the sin bin but the Giants did not relinquish control.
Tomkins said: "I thought we started the game really well but we've just got no resilience.
"We're probably in quite a rare position where we've got 14 players leaving the club at the end of the year and we've got a lot of new players coming in.
"We can't make play-offs, our season's dead.
"But, as individuals, the players have got to find some personal motivation and some personal pride within their own performance.
"It's my job as a coach to build that but also, individually, players have got to want to perform. They've got to want to give 100 per cent effort."