Simon Woolford refused to blame injuries for Huddersfield’s opening round defeat as he ripped into his side’s defensive display.
The Giants conceded seven tries as they went down to a Niall Evalds-inspired Salford 34-14.
Huddersfield were missing ten members of their squad for the contest, including Jermaine McGillvary, Leroy Cudjoe, Paul Clough, Lee Gaskell, Dale Ferguson, Aaron Murphy and Ukuma Ta’ai.
But Woolford said it was no excuse for his side’s performance.
“Injuries are going to happen and unfortunately they’ve happened for us early in the year,” Woolford said.
“But when you’ve got Faz (Izaac Farrell) and Sam Hewitt, even Walney (Adam Walne) was strong for us, it was the guys who we expect more from who didn’t get their bit right.
“From an attack standpoint we weren’t at our best with disruptions over the last few weeks, but defensively I was really disappointed. We made the same mistakes, a lot of their tries were of a similar cause and we didn’t learn from that.
“The important thing about edge defence is you all work together and connected but our right edge didn’t do that all game. They struck gold their one, they struck gold their twice and they kept going there and they kept getting points. I would have thought they’d have learned from their mistakes but they didn’t and that’s disappointing.
“To Salford’s credit they kicked well, we got to our last play and we didn’t build any pressure at all. Our kicking game in general wasn’t good. We just weren’t good enough.”
Woolford confirmed Gaskell and Murphy should return next week.
