Finnigan shines in Bulls debut

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The former Widnes and Salford player, who rejected the chance to join Giants in the close season, showed them what they missed with two first-half scores that put the Bulls into a commanding 24-6 lead.

Huddersfield hit back in the second half to briefly make a game of it but remain pointless after they suffered heavy defeats in each of their opening two rounds.

Bradford coach Steve McNamara reacted to his side's surprise opening defeat at Wakefield and dropped Tame Tupou and Ben Jeffries, re-shuffled his three-quarter line and brought in Finnigan. And the changes paid off from the start, with the Bulls causing all sorts of problems for their opponents with their willingness to keep the ball alive.

The Giants were slow starters and did not help themselves by some ill-discipline but they gradually built pressure and three times forced full-back Michael Platt to concede goal-line drop-outs in quick succession. But the Bradford defence held firm and their neat offloads twice caused breaches of the visitors' defence in the first quarter.

Impressive loose forward Sam Burgess took Andy Lynch's pass to send hooker Terry Newton in for the game's first try on three minutes and Finnigan was on the shoulder of Paul Deacon after the scrum-half ran at the Huddersfield defensive line.

Deacon kicked both conversions to make it 12-0 but Huddersfield struck back in the 29th minute when scrum-half Luke Robinson jinked his way through the Bradford defence for a try, which Chris Thorman goaled.

However, the Bulls continued to look the more dangerous side and they doubled their score in a nine-minute spell just before half-time.

Former Huddersfield centre James Evans bounced off full-back Thorman to finish decisively and Finnigan took Newton's pass from dummy half to crash over for his second try.

Deacon maintained his 100% record with the boot to open up a 24-6 interval lead but the Giants were more purposeful in the second half and quickly gave themselves a glimmer of hope with a second try.