Betfred Super League<\/p>\n
Huddersfield (4) 10<\/p>\n
Tries: Milne, Gagai Goal: Flanagan<\/p>\n
Wigan (10) 24<\/p>\n
Tries: Partington, Eckersley 3 Goals: Keighran 4<\/p>\n
Zach Eckersley’s hat-trick broke Huddersfield Giants’ stiff resistance to send Wigan Warriors up to second and to within two points of the Super League summit.<\/p>\n
Jim Lenihan’s side made a nonsense of the fact they had suffered 11 straight defeats going into the game and threatened to do the league double over the in-form Warriors after pulling off a shock victory at the Brick Community Stadium in March.<\/p>\n
Taane Milne’s try put the league’s bottom side ahead, but Oliver Partington and Eckersley hit back with tries which had Matt Peet’s team 10-4 up at the break.<\/p>\n
The hosts raised their game again in the second half to level through Jacob Gagai but as their discipline faltered and Joe Greenwood was sin-binned for dissent, Adam Keighran’s penalty and a late Eckersley double secured the win for Wigan.<\/p>\n
Huddersfield have suffered another tough week, losing three players for the season through injury and having long-serving chairman Ken Davy step down, and the sight of Wigan rolling into town on the back of seven successive wins in all competitions had some supporters fearing the worst.<\/p>\n
Lenihan has started to work a little magic, however, and after Huddersfield soaked up the expected early pressure, they struck first as Milne finished strongly.<\/p>\n
Wigan have been in imperious form and they soon edged ahead as Partington stretched out to finish after evading two tackles following Keighran’s short, sharp pass.<\/p>\n
Tanguy Zenon was forced off with a head injury after being knocked out cold, and Eckersley took advantage of a brilliant Keighran pass to score his first try of the evening and open a six-point gap at half-time.<\/p>\n
Tempers flared throughout the game and referee Matty Lynn’s patience ran out just before the interval as he sent both Tui Lolohea and Shea O’Connor to the sin-bin for a tussle at the play-the-ball.<\/p>\n
It started to look like the game would slip away from Huddersfield, but they muscled up again in the second half and levelled when Gagai finished a slick passing move and George Flanagan, on as the 18th man, kicked the extras.<\/p>\n
Suddenly it was Wigan who looked unsure of themselves, but the game turned on moments of indiscipline.<\/p>\n
Huddersfield thought they had scored a brilliant counter-attacking try after Wigan’s teenage half-back George Marsden had dropped the ball, but referee Lynn disallowed it for a forward pass. <\/p>\n
To rub salt in the wound, Wigan challenged the decision and were awarded a penalty for a high challenge on Marsden, with Keighran converting the two points to restore the lead.<\/p>\n
Huddersfield were still hunting the win but when they were penalised for a knock-on, Greenwood disputed the decision despite the captain’s challenge having been used, and he was sent to the sin-bin.<\/p>\n
That ended the superb Huddersfield effort as Wigan went up the other end and Harry Smith, the calmest man on the pitch, dinked a beautiful kick for Eckersley to race through and collect for his second try.<\/p>\n
With all resistance over, Eckersley claimed his hat-trick, and made it 19 tries for the season, from George O’Loughlin’s pass on the last tackle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Betfred Super League Huddersfield (4) 10 Tries: Milne, Gagai Goal: Flanagan Wigan (10) 24 Tries: Partington, Eckersley 3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-697832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}