Airlie Birds start to soar

Hull's season finally seems to be back on track after a 28-20 win over Huddersfield took them to within three points of the top six.

The injury-ravaged Airlie Birds have languished near the foot of the engage Super League for most of the campaign but a hard-fought third straight win gets them to the fringes of the play-off picture.

Australian scrum-half Adam Dykes - playing his first league match for five weeks due to illness - was the inspiration for the Black and Whites, creating all four of their tries, two of which were scored by Todd Byrne.

Huddersfield have now gone four games without a win in the league and will travel to Cardiff for Millennium Magic next weekend in 11th place.

Threatening

Hull always looked the more threatening from the outset and went ahead with a 10th-minute penalty from Danny Tickle, who went on to bring up a century of points for the season.

It took until the 20th minute for either side to post a serious attack though and with it came the first try, Byrne notching his third of the season after a clever pass from Dykes had sent Kirk Yeaman racing clear.

Hull's direct running was now starting to puncture the Huddersfield defence, setting up the opportunity for Dykes to lay on two more tries.

Craig Hall grabbed the first, touching down in the corner after Dykes created a gap for himself and looped a neat ball out to the wing, before Danny Washbrook took in another pass from the former Cronulla man and held off three would-be tacklers to score.

Huddersfield found any direction in attack quite hard to come by but did manage to score before the break, with Luke Robinson's 10th try of the season and two goals from youngster Tom Hemingway bringing them back to 18-8.

The visitors also started the second period strongly and Rod Jensen thought he had scored in the corner, only to see the score chalked off for a forward pass from Leroy Cudjoe.

Balance

Tickle added a fourth Hull try with 46 minutes gone after Tommy Lee had burst his way through the Huddersfield line.

The Giants did hit back with a solo close-range effort from Steve Snitch, only for Dykes to again redress the balance with a fine short pass that provided ever-present Byrne with a brace of tries.

Huddersfield gave the travelling supporters a glimmer of hope when Paul Whatuira poached his sixth try of the season after Yeaman failed to deal with Robinson's kick through, but despite Hemingway converting from the touchline, Hull held on wityhout too many alarms.