SIMON WOOLFORD SPEAKS TO THE PRESS AHEAD OF WAKEFIELD TEST

Giants Head Coach talks to the press ahead of our Friday night trip to Wakefield Trinity

Simon, have you got anyone back this week?

Not quite, we’ve got a lot of guys back into full training, but being a short week we’re only training twice given the turnaround from the London game. We’ll give people time to get back training with the team, and we should have quite a few for the Castleford game.

We’re still looking at Paul Clough, Dale Ferguson, Jake Wardle and Aaron Murphy. All those guys should be in full training by the end of this week and ready for next week. It’s been a tough period, but the troops are coming back now which is pleasing.

You could have a selection headache next week?

That would be nice. A headache on who to pick, as opposed to there’s no-one to pick. Those guys have worked well in rehab over the last few weeks, Murphy in particular. He’s going to be well ahead of schedule, and he keeps telling me he heals quick and he’s proved it this time.

What have back-to-back wins done for the squad?

Obviously, they’re buzzing at the moment. A couple of teams have gone down to London expecting to win and come back with nothing, so we knew we had to play well. I think the first 30 minutes from a defensive point of view were very good, particularly our middles who did a fantastic job. London found coming out of their own end very difficult because our middles were fantastic. It got a little bit tight early in the second half, when they scored either side of half-time, but the pleasing thing for me was that we were able to find a way to wrestle the momentum back in our favour, and that’s not something we’ve not been great at for the first part of the competition. I think the scoreline probably flattered London a bit, because we were more dominant than it suggested, but we’re very happy with the win.

80 points in your last two games. Does that tell its own tale?

Our attack was always going to improve. I’ve said it a number of times, losing Lee Gaskell for three games early in the year upset our combination and our continuity with the football. It was always going to take a bit of time with him and Matt Frawley. But, now we’ve had them together, as well as Darnell McIntosh at fullback and Kruise Leeming through the middle, so our spine has been able to get some good football together. I always thought we would improve as we went, and that’s certainly been the case.

What sort of challenge will you get from Wakefield?

They’re a big side and hard to beat at home. Obviously, Danny Brough has got a fantastic kicking game and he’s putting teams under a lot of pressure at the moment. Fifita and Pauli are a handful, so they’re going to present challenges for us, but if we can bottle the intent and mind-set we had with our defence last week, and the week before for that matter, I think we’re heading in the right direction. London scored 22-points at the weekend, but a couple of those tries were just careless. Generally, I think our intent and our attitude towards our defence has been fantastic, but that needs to improve, particularly against Wakefield. They were down 20-points against Warrington with 15 minutes to go, but they nearly stole that game, so they’re definitely a team that can score plenty of points and do a lot of offloading. It’s certainly going to be a night where we need to roll the sleeves up.

How do you cope with the size of some of Wakefield’s players?

We’ll have a plan around the individuals they’ve got in their team. Last year we came up with a couple of good plans that worked well against them, and we’ve obviously had a good look at them already this year. Luke Robinson has got our attack sorted, so I’m sure he’s going to come up with some ways to exploit weaknesses in their defence. Every team has them, and we’re trying to find them, this week will be no different. We’ll have a look and see where we think our attack is going to suit us best.

Is this your first trip to Wakefield?

I went there in the pre-season game at the start of the year, and it was nice and cold that night! It will be a good atmosphere. Obviously, it’s a tough place to go and win. At the end of the day, though, it’s another rugby league ground that we need to travel to and play well.

You’re going up against Danny Brough for the first time, has it taken some adjusting to get used to life without him?

It was always going to take some adjustment, but what stalled it a little bit was having Lee Gaskell out. We lost Jordan Rankin the week before, and Oliver Russell was out on loan, so all of a sudden we went from having plenty of halves to none in round 1 which was disappointing and that hurt us. I think everyone will agree that our halves combination is getting better every week, and we’ve had a couple of really good games over the last month. Our kicking game has been fantastic. Without Brough here, Gaskell has taken more responsibility. Outside of that, we’ve got Matt Frawley, Adam O’Brien, Kruise Leeming and even Jordan Turner who’ve done some kicking. We’ve been able to mix it up and share the workload. Sometimes we’ve got that right, but other times we haven’t, so again it’s just something that we’ll keep working on that.

Does Daniel Smith’s departure give you potential to bring anyone else in?

Not really, we’re full this year. Daniel was in a position where he wasn’t getting an opportunity here, and next year as far as our cap was concerned he probably wasn’t someone we were going to be able to retain, so thankfully the club were able to come to an agreement with him and he’s been able to get an opportunity elsewhere. He’s a fantastic guy and we wish him all the best