HUDDERSFIELD Giants head coach Ian Watson refused to make excuses despite revealing a sickness bug had further depleted his injury-hit side before Friday’s 48-0 hammering at Warrington Wolves.

The Giants conceded eight tries at The Halliwell Jones Stadium as they slumped to their seventh defeat in eight Betfred Super League matches in a one-sided contest.

Preparations for the game had been hit by sickness – with Watson saying some had needed hospital treatment.

Two Huddersfield players were lost to head injuries during the game and the 18th man, debutant Jack Billington, called into the fray as a result was a late change due to the ongoing impact of the bug on the camp, but the Giants boss was still unhappy with performance levels.

Watson said: “I can make a lot of excuses and talk about the illness and how bad people have been all week, but we don’t have a level of player of what they do.

“So what we’ve got to do is work harder than them and I don’t think we did that.

“Every single one of their players has probably outworked ours, which is embarrassing to say.

“We’ve got young players out there, we’ve got players who are ill playing out there. We’ve had players in hospital this week who’ve lost five or six kilograms.

“But we’ve got to be better than that. We’ve got a duty to be better than that.”

Watson accepts his side’s poor run of results could bring scrutiny of his position.

“That’s for someone else to make a call,” Watson said. “I can’t control any of that, but I am passionate about what I do.”