Woolford 'really happy' with Trinity performance

Simon Woolford was happy with his sides defensive resolve in the 16-4 win over Wakefield Trinity

By Joe Buck

Simon Woolford was a very satisfied man after Huddersfield’s 16-4 victory over Wakefield on Wednesday night.

Speaking post-match, he praised his team’s efforts throughout but took time to highlight the defensive work from Giants during the whole match.

“I’m really happy. To keep Wakey scoreless for 78 or 79 minutes was really good.”

“I think that there’s been a lot of work in preseason on our D (defence) and I thought at both ends of the field tonight, it was up there with the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”

“It was good to see the hard work we’ve put in over the last three or four months and it was good to see it transfer onto the field against quality opposition in Wakey who can score a lot of points on their day.”

“With the ball we obviously made some errors in the second half but that happens in these sort of trial [games] but they’re easy to fix.”

Giants started with pretty much their strongest side, including a first start of 2020 for Lee Gaskell.

Gaskell, who missed the win against Halifax last Sunday with injury started at the Mobile Rocket Stadium alongside club captain Aidan Sezer.

This was the first time this partnership had been seen by supporters and Woolford was excited with what he saw from the pair.

“They had their moments, didn’t they?” said Woolford.

“First time they’ve played together but they’ve looked very good in training so I think that combination will just get better and better.”

“Looking at them tonight, there’s enough to see they’re going to be pretty exciting and throughout the year they are going to compliment each other very well.”

“I thought Adam O’Brien was really good to. He played very well versus Halifax and he was outstanding again tonight so the more these guys play together, the better they will get.”

Although this match was simply a preseason game aimed at building match-fitness, the professionalism shown by Giants to get the job done was very impressive.

Woolford also highlighted this and contrasted this performance with most of the on-field disappointments of 2019.

“I thought early on we won the arm wrestle and there were a number of times in the first half where we kept them inside their own thirty so they were kicking from poor positions and our outside backs were catching the ball on halfway.”

“You look at last year and that was us, we were [the team] getting held in our own thirty and kicking the ball in poor positions.”

“We lost that field position battle a lot last year, so it was pleasing [tonight].”

Giants final preseason game is on Sunday away at Batley Bulldogs.

Catch a replay of the whole Wakefield Trinity game tonight at 6pm on GiantsTV. Use the code "Free_Month" for your first month free when purchasing a monthly pass.