IT may only be two wins, but there is a growing confidence at Huddersfield Giants that the lows of this season will soon be firmly behind them.
And that comes down in the most part to one man – Jim Lenihan.
The Australian coach arrived in May and his impact was not immediately obvious – losing his first eight games in charge, which stretched Huddersfield’s winless run to twelve.
But it’s now much clearer that the Giants are a different beast after successive wins against York Knights and Hull FC.
There were signs before that, notably in close defeats to Wakefield Trinity and Wigan Warriors.
But ultimately Lenihan wasn’t chasing results in those early weeks in charge – he was seeking improvements for the long-term.
And with a new physicality, new mentality and new style of play on show, he appears to be having some success.
Physicality
Lenihan spoke from the start about the group not being fit enough, saying they were “drastically underdone in our fitness compared to the top sides”.
That can’t be rectified at a stroke – but he’s put a big focus on driving that to be as good as it possibly can be by the end of this season.
“Jim has ramped it up since he’s been here,” says star fullback George Flanagan.
“The intensity of training has gone up so much and it’s starting to show now.
“He gets into us a bit in training – he’s a loud man. But when you want to talk to him he’s a calm man too.”
Lenihan says: “We’ve gone into games underdone and at times in the game we’ve bottomed out.
“There’s no doubt you can see physically we’re getting better. Our physicality is improving.”
Mentality
Coaches talk frequently about ‘effort areas’ or ‘one-percenters’, and it’s a big deal for Lenihan too.
He says: “We reviewed the York game and there were four or five moments where we won the game on our defence. If we didn’t do any one of those, we’d have lost the game.
“Again (against Hull) we kept covering each other. We won’t be a perfect team but when we’re not playing perfectly, we’ve got to cover that with effort.”
That was exemplified by Kieran Rush’s last-ditch effort to stop Joe Batchelor grounding the ball two minutes from time last Thursday.
As it turned out, the Hull try would have been ruled out for an earlier offside, but Rush wasn’t to know.
The youngster says: “You play to the whistle, don’t you? In a game that close, you’ve just got to get there and make that extra effort, because it could decide the game.
“We put a big focus on it. We show it in video, who has been putting those effort areas in. You don’t want to be the person that doesn’t do it and it leads to a try. You’ve just got to do it – it’s part and parcel of being a good team-mate.”
Style of play
Improved physicality and mentality has allowed Lenihan to implement the changes in style that he wants – namely a more direct side which earns the right to play.
“We were very one-dimensional (before), in that we just thought about tackling and running and playing some football shape,” the coach explains.
“It’s as much about the physicality, working hard, the mentality to it. We were trying to play too much football. We’re now just banging the door down over the advantage line.
“If you watch the really good sides like Leeds and Wigan, they have shape but they do it on the back of really getting over the advantage line and being at the ruck first.
“We’ve had a really big adjustment on our ruck, and on the other side of it we’re trying to get better in our tackling.”
Short-term
Those two recent victories have allowed Huddersfield to realistically target avoiding the wooden spoon.
They are two points off Hull FC, four away from Bradford Bulls, and have a good opportunity to continue their momentum over the next fortnight against fellow bottom-half sides Catalans Dragons (at home on Saturday) and Toulouse Olympique (Saturday, August 15).
“No one wants to finish bottom,” says Flanagan. “If we get more wins, we put ourselves in a good position.
“But it’s all about our performances, and if we can perform like that every week we’ll run every team close.
“When you’ve got a team that’s desperate to win and desperate to grind for each other, you won’t go far wrong. I’m looking forward to the end of the year now and we’ll see where it takes us.”
Long-term
However the focus has long been on next season – so much so that Lenihan describes their current work as a “six-month pre-season”.
He says: “We’re going into next year’s competition with live games (now) against good opposition and we’re improving. We’re not waiting until the off-season to get better.
“What we get every week is live feedback. We’ve changed what we’re doing in our attacking and defensive structure compared to what we were doing before I got here, so it’s super important we’re getting feedback on our game style and where we need to get better.
“We’re not waiting and trying to adjust in January, we’re making changes now. Then when we get into pre-season, we’ll make changes on those changes.”
Huddersfield fans will discover on Saturday where their team will play next season. Work on how they’ll play is well underway.