Harlequins 10-18 Huddersfield Giants

Harlequins (4) 10
Tries: Pryce, Melling Goals: Purdham

Huddersfield (12) 18
Tries: O'Donnell, McGillvary, Horne Goals: Brough 3

Brown played for England in the one-off Test against France in 2010

Huddersfield Giants went to the top of Super League by beating previous leaders Harlequins.

Quins opened the scoring through Karl Pryce, but tries from Luke O'Donnell and Jermaine McGillvray gave the Giants the lead at half-time.

With Kevin Brown dominant at stand-off, Graeme Horne put the visitors three scores clear early in the second half.

But they missed several chances before Chris Melling slid over for Quins with five minutes remaining.

The Giants were on the front foot first and twice inside the opening five Cudjoe was denied a try. On the first occasion the centre was adjudged to have fallen just short as he went to ground the ball, and a knock on cost him the second time around.

The hosts were a catch away from taking the lead themselves moments later, Luke Gale creating a gap only for his offload to Rob Purdham to go to ground.

The deadlock was finally broken on the 15-minute mark, the hosts spreading the ball wide, allowing Purdham to feed Pryce who had the simple task of cantering over in the corner.

After 25 minutes the visitors forced the home side back when O'Donnell took Shaun Lunt's short pass to crash over.

The visitors had a spring in their step and moved further ahead just after the half-hour, McGillvary taking a superb lofted pass from Brown to dart over in the corner.

The second half saw Horne pick up David Fa'alogo pass to go over at the posts, and only a desperate tackle from Chad Randall then stopped Brown from putting the game to bed.

Brown, who was left out of the England 'elite squad' announced earlier this week, was pulling the strings for the visitors, but they missed a number of clear opportunities before Luke Dorn's pass saw Melling slide over with five minutes remaining to give Quins hope.

Huddersfield coach Nathan Brown said: "We had four tries denied and probably correctly so, but we bombed a lot of other opportunities.

"That is no good when you consider where we want to get to as a side. We really let ourselves down with our execution.

"It is all about discipline and consistency and we need to work very hard. Obviously I am still really happy with the win as Quins are a very good side, but we definitely need to get better."

Quins coach Rob Powell said: "I think tonight was just a case of us straying from the gameplan.

"We started really slowly - we did not come out of the blocks like we have done in our other games this season.

"There were alarm bells ringing then but we hung in there. At 18-4 against a good side in recent seasons we would probably have folded but we kept going, held them at bay and got a try ourselves, so we have plenty to work on."

Harlequins RL: Dorn, O'Callaghan, Clubb, Howell, Melling, Gale, Randall, Wilkes, Ellis, Ward, Purdham, Burnett, Bailey.

Replacements: Replacements: Pryce, Ambler, Koupartisas , Temata.

Huddersfield: Grix, McGillvary, Cudjoe, Gilmour, Hodgson, Brown, Brough, Crabtree, Faiumu, Griffin, Molloy, Fa'alogo, O'Donnell.

Replacements: Replacements: Lunt, Patrick, Ferguson, Horne.

Att: 2,624

Referee: Phil Bentham (Warrington)