Super League: St Helens 38-6 Huddersfield Giants

St Helens head coach Paul Rowley:

“I’m happy to get the two points but obviously it was a tough watch. We gave Huddersfield enough chances to hurt us.

“I always try and be honest in my assessment and find the positives so it can go on behind closed doors but it’s important that obviously I don’t pretend it was a very good performance.

“Some things would fit into the excuses category, some into the reasons category but overall, our general skill let us down on more than one occasion, our inability to see and play the play that was going on instead of playing within ourselves gave up maybe five or six tries at times.”

Huddersfield Giants boss Jim Lenihan:

“The end result is a bit different but I thought we took another step today towards where we’re going, I thought. We took a very good side, a good pack.

“A couple of tries we gave away easily early on, a small side from Sironen and some brilliance from Seaman got them two.

“I felt we competed and pushed hard, we challenged ourselves, we worked hard to compete against the Saints and then I felt the first half went longer and even into the second half, we built a lot of fatigue into them and put them under a bit of pressure.”

(on Lewis Jagger) “I’m not 100 percent sure about the Jags. I think he came in for an HIA but there was some kind of concern that it might be a little hot as well.

“I think he’s been cleared of his HIA but I’ll find out more about that later.”

St Helens: Welsby; Dagnall, Robertson, Percival, Macdonald; Sailor, Hastings; Walmsley, Clark, Klemmer, Sironen, Wright, Shorrocks.

exchange: Delaney, Davies, Humphreys, Suluka-Fifita.

Huddersfield: Flanagan; Kershaw, Jagger, Gagai, Milne; Lolohea, Russell; Rogers, Woolford, Patolo, O’Donnell, Dunford, Powell.

exchange: Burgess, English, Cozza, Geyer.

Referee: James Vela.