Both the Tigers and the Giants registered their first wins of Superleague XX in Round 4 last week. The Giants took the points off Widnes Vikings and Castleford got their points with a stunning win over the Warriors.
Despite both sides currently languishing within the bottom four, whoever took the points tonight would lift themselves up to fifth, snapping at the heels of a top four slot.
The first half was one dominated by defence, with the odd handling error and daft penalty thrown in for good measure. Castleford dominated possession and position but couldn't make it count.
On the quarter hour it looked like Ellis had opened the scoring for the Giants but the slow-motion replays showed that he dropped the ball over the line and it took until almost the thirty-eighth minute before the crowd saw the first try.
Denied by the video referee earlier, Ellis made no mistake to score against his previous team-mates, and give the Giants a slender 6-0 half time lead, after he dummied an outside pass before stepping past his tackler and running twenty to score by the posts. Brough added the extras and despite their dominance it was Daryl Powell's side who trailed at the interval.
The second half belonged entirely to the Giants as they shut out the visitors and ran in three more tries.
While we'd been forced to wait thirty-eight minutes for the first score, just five minutes had passed when Taia brushed off three attempted tackles to go twenty metres and score under the posts, making it a simple conversion for Brough for 12-0.
Just after the hour mark and the Giants managed to keep the ball alive in a scrappy passage of play and Murphy went over in the corner. This time Brough missed the conversion but he added a penalty a few minutes later, for 18-0, after he'd been held down in the tackle.
The Giants were cruising and the Tigers toothless in attack. The final try came with just a couple of minutes left when Cudjoe fed McGilvary to score by the corner flag. Brough again missed the conversion but his side had a big 22-0 win and Paul Andersons side had kept their opponents scoreless for the first time since beating Wakefield 40-0 in September 2013.
This was a poor game littered with erroors and both sides still have a great deal of improving to do if they are to be challengers in 2015.
Giants: Grix, McGilvary, Cudjoe, Wardle, Murphy, Brough, Ellis, Huby, Robinson, Kopczak, Ferres, Hughes, Lawrence.. Subs: Crabtree, Wood, Taia, Johnson.
Tigers: Dorn, Clare, Channing, Webster, Carney, Finn, Gale, Lynch, Moore, Millington, Holmes, Moors, Massey. Subs: Roberts, Cook, Wheeldon, Crossley.
Referee: James Child
Attendance:5,257
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