Brown swayed by player power

Huddersfield coach Nathan Brown revealed that player power was behind his decision to shake up his team for Sunday's Carnegie Challenge Cup semi-final against Warrington.

Brown brought in five new faces and restored skipper Kevin Brown to his old stand-off role for his side's 33-6 defeat at the City of Salford Stadium. The Giants have slipped down the Super League table after losing seven of their last eight matches, culminating in a 52-6 humiliation at lowly Castleford, but Brown says the changes were prompted by the players.

"It certainly wasn't my idea to freshen things up," he told the post-match news conference. "Basically, the players weren't happy with how we were attacking. They were desperate to change."

He added: "Last week we obviously had an issue with effort. There were some underlying issues and one was that the players didn't want to play our attacking structure any more.

"It was pointless going out and attacking like that because we would have got a poor effort again. So we had to try and change it within a week for a Challenge Cup semi-final, which was never going to be easy.

"It's not ideal for anyone but they were more keen to go back to a traditional seven-and-six style of football.

"The reward was we got effort but our attack was poor and poor attack puts your defence under too much pressure."

The Giants threatened a fightback at the start of the second half but the Wolves defence held firm and they clinched victory with full-back Brett Hodgson's 57th-minute try as they set up a Wembley showdown with Leeds.

"I thought Huddersfield played well," said Warrington's former Giants coach Tony Smith. "They came out firing and made us work hard.

"I thought we controlled things once we got into the game but they were never far off our tail. My boys were determined. I thought our forwards were terrific and commitment to our defence was awesome."