Huddersfield Giants fans may have former St Helens head coach Justin Holbrook to thank for the appointment of Jim Lenihan, with Lenihan revealing how his former mentor ‘lit a fire’ in him to want to coach in Super League.
Lenihan has been appointed as the man to replace Luke Robinson with the Australian swapping Queensland Cup side Brisbane Tigers for Super League side Huddersfield Giants, a team that he played for back in the 1990s.
That was something that he addressed when asked ‘why Huddersfield’ as he spoke as head coach for the first time, in a presser shared to the Giants’ YouTube channel.
“I really enjoyed my time here as a player and when the opportunity came up to come here, it was something I was really passionate about,” Lenihan outlined.
“I wanted to come over to Super League and coach. I’ve been doing an assistant role in the NRL for quite some time and as much as it is a great opportunity to be an assistant in the NRL, to be the head coach of a team in Super League is one that I wanted to pursue.”
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Lenihan also confirmed that it’s not the first time had had applied for the Giants’ head coach job, revealing he’d put his name forward when Luke Robinson was appointed in late 2024.
Regarding his own background and what had pushed him to take his talents to Super League, Lenihan pointed to former St Helens head coach Justin Holbrook as a key mentor that helped drive him to make the decision.
He explained: “I was a head coach of a Queensland Cup club where we had some success and won a few premierships then I went up to the (Gold Coast) Titans with Justin Holbrook, who had some success over here with St Helens.
“Talking to Justin at the time, he was always saying how good it was to coach, in his experience, in England and that was certainly something that lit a bit of a fire in me.”
As for the task at hand, he said: “I think there’s a real opportunity here. Right now, I think Huddersfield is a rough diamond and there’s plenty of negatives that people want to draw upon with the Huddersfield Giants but I see and want to choose to focus on the positives.”
Whilst Lenihan is in the country and will be at Headingley when the Giants take on Leeds on Friday night, he’s expecting to leave the coaching to Liam Finn and Leroy Cudjoe as he observes before getting stuck in over the week off for the Challenge Cup.
He said: “Short-term, Liam Finn and Leroy will be maintaining what they’ve been doing and then we’ll look to add some pieces to the puzzle as we go on over the next few weeks.
“The coaches have been doing the scouting for the Leeds game so it would be mad for me to come in here and try and overturn any information they’re doing at the moment.”
