Giants will play best team possible

James Gordon

Huddersfield’s season might be over, but coach Rick Stone says they owe it to their fans and the competition to ensure their strongest team takes to the field for the rest of the year.

The Giants can’t reach the top four, but their opponents on Friday, St Helens, are well in the hunt for the play-off places.

They are missing captain Leroy Cudjoe and forwards Shannon Wakeman (knee) and Sebastine Ikahihifo (ankle) and were thumped by Salford last week.

Stone told the club’s official website: “I don’t want to be harping on about last week but it’s not acceptable. It’s not fair on our fans. I’m definitely looking for a response next week. 

“It’s something that’s not acceptable and we want to make sure we can rectify it as quickly as possible. As far as we’re concerned we’ve got two games and we’re going to produce our best team in the next two weeks to try and play our best stuff. 

“It doesn’t change too much, we’ve got a couple of big games ahead against Saints and Leeds. We just want to make sure we’re up for the contest each week.

“I think we’ve got an obligation to our fans and whoever supports our club to put our best team out there. We want to win as many games as we can and finish as high as we can on the ladder. 

“We’ve got a couple of injury concerns, but we’ll select our best seventeen and we’ll go from there.”