You wake from your four-month-long coma and immediately grab your phone. Upon opening it, you scroll to TikTok and launch the app. The first thing you see is the official Huddersfield Giants account posting an edit of hooker Cole Geyer to the soundtrack of Stella Lefty’s ‘Boston’.

Who is Stella Lefty, you wonder. You’d also perhaps be forgiven for querying exactly who Cole Geyer is. But the main thing you can’t wrap your head around is the fact that, when you think back to the time you entered your coma, weren’t Huddersfield meant to be rubbish?

Well, in short, yes, and for a long period of time in 2026, they were. Sentiments towards Huddersfield for much of this year have scarcely been positive. Results left a lot to be desired. Starting the season with five straight defeats in the league saw them become the first side of the year to sack a head coach when Luke Robinson was dismissed after round five. Attendances at the Accu Stadium had dropped off a cliff, with Huddersfield holding this season’s lowest single attendance (2,736), as well as the league’s lowest average attendance (4,622). These are both, as they are every time the Giants find themselves towards the bottom of these rankings, monumentally impressive feats for a club that plays in the fourth-biggest stadium in the league. 

The uncertainty surrounding the exact makeup of the 2027 Super League has not exactly worked in their favour either. With English rugby league’s (and, perhaps crucially, the NRL’s) favourite child in the London Broncos looking likely to be added to the top division, it is often suggested it may come at the expense of the Giants. Those most critical of Huddersfield have argued that only their status as being the home of the sport’s birth all the way back in 1895 gives them enough of a claim to remain in the top division. 

Yet Huddersfield’s executive chairman Ralph Rimmer has maintained at every opportunity that the Giants are in no danger of being removed from the top division, and if anything, despite things looking disappointing both on and off the pitch, they look set to improve their standing. Speaking on the All Out Rugby League Podcast, Rimmer was very clear that Robinson’s replacement at head coach, Jim Lenihan, was chosen in part because of his honesty and awareness that things may have to get worse before they could get better. 

And things did get a little bit worse. 

Two wins under interim coach Liam Finn meant that Huddersfield at least had some points for the season, but Lenihan would have to wait until his ninth game in charge to see his side win. 

Rimmer will consider himself lucky that Lenihan’s diagnosis of the state of play at the Accu was correct. The picture, however, is slightly different now. The Giants are now on a run of five wins from their last six games, have climbed off the bottom of the table and suddenly look to have something worth building on.

In the season’s dying embers, last night’s victory over Leigh showed the fruits of Lenihan and the squad’s labours. 

Young players like Geyer and George Flanagan, who himself has seriously come into his own in recent weeks, are driving much of Huddersfield’s success. Against Leigh, key Leopards players like Umyla Hanley, Adam Cook, and Lachlan Lam, the Three Horsemen of Leigh’s late-season charge, were for the most part kept out of the game. At the other end, Geyer went over twice to give the Giants a 30-18 victory, providing the biggest indication yet that the misery that seemed to have set in midway through the season is in the rearview mirror. Measured confidence is now the feeling towards next year.

There are, understandably, geographic concerns about the club’s move to Dewsbury’s FLAIR Stadium for 2027. Clarity over their future, after the back-and-forth, unclear nature of former chairman Ken Davy’s proposals over a move to The Shay in Halifax, will probably do them some good. A smaller stadium, designed specifically for rugby, with Huddersfield as main tenants, could actually allow them to flourish. 

And, if the reported move for Hull FC’s Jake Arthur to play in the halves comes to fruition too, they’ll also have found themselves a player who, like the Giants, has pushed through a difficult start to emerge with signs of promise. 

Of course, nothing is guaranteed in Super League, but with a little more patience, some good things could be about to happen in the birthplace of rugby league.