George Flanagan scored 14 points and masterminded another try as Huddersfield Giants beat Castleford Tigers to chalk up only their third Super League win of the season.
The 20-year-old full-back sparked a moment of real quality for Tui Lolohea’s opening try, then converted scores from Sam Halsall and Taane Milne before adding a penalty and crossing for a try himself to help Giants bounce back from last week’s hammering by Catalans Dragons.
The visitors had been in charge at 12-0 up but Cas, who ran reigning champions Wigan Warriors close last week, hit back with tries from George Lawler and Zac Cini just before the break to draw level.
Giants blanked the home side in the second half and added tries from Milne, Flanagan and a second from Lolohea late on to move within two points of Tigers in the table and extend the hosts’ miserable home run to just two wins in their last 13 Super League games at the Mend-a-Hose Jungle.
Castleford coach Danny McGuire is under RFL investigation after expressing his unhappiness at the refereeing of his side’s late defeat by Wigan last week, but his side received an early boost as Giants hooker Zac Woolford was sin-binned after just 40 seconds.
The Australian barged into Joe Westerman late and received a yellow card to seemingly hand the Tigers an early advantage.
They failed to use it, and were hit on the counter-attack by Huddersfield, producing the only moment of real dash in an attritional opening half-hour as Flanagan made a half-break and freed Jacob Gagai for a sprint down the right before sending Lolohea over.
Giants cut loose again as centre Halsall, making his 50th appearance for the club, found a gap and Flanagan brilliantly nailed the conversion from the touchline.
Huddersfield seemed to be coasting to a comfortable half-time lead but Cas suddenly found the kind of spirit that saw them go within a few minutes of beating Wigan.
Louis Senior’s break set up the platform for Lawler to score and Cini’s feint and burst through two tackles, with Rowan Milnes converting both tries, suddenly had the home side level.
But the half-time break interrupted that momentum and it was the Giants who raised their game in the second half to run away with the win.
Milne had gone close to touching down Lolohea’s grubber but moments later edged his team back ahead by feinting to offload to Gagai and powering over himself.
Innes Senior bounced the ball over the line when he should have scored to get Cas back in it and Flanagan landed a penalty to give the visitors some breathing space at 18-12 ahead.
With nine minutes to go, Flanagan wrapped up a fine performance by sprinting onto Lolohea’s pass to score, with Lolohea adding an interception try in the last minute and Flanagan converting both.
