Huddersfield Giants, who were the 2009 Engage Super League club of the year and reached their second Challenge Cup final in four years, threw the gauntlet down at the start of a new season with an ultimately comfortable win over their neighbours.

While Bradford Bulls are in a period of adjustment after their lamentable failure to reach the play-offs for the first time last year — and they will surely improve on last night’s fingers- and-thumbs display — Huddersfield have serious ambitions of securing some silverware.

They made life hard for themselves by spending 20 minutes of a fogbound second half with Luke Robinson and Lee Gilmour in the sin-bin, but they held firm against opponents who had little creative nous.

Bradford have recruited heavily from Sydney’s beaches, where the Manly Sea Eagles trio of Matt Orford, Heath L’Estrange and Glenn Hall, and Brett Kearney, from Cronulla, possibly wished they still were, and the Giants took advantage of hesitancy with three tries in the opening 23 minutes.

Brett Hodgson, last year’s Man of Steel, began where he left off in directing Leroy Cudjoe on the right wing for the first of two touchdowns. The curiosity was that Huddersfield twice missed touch with penalties but found themselves in a commanding early position thanks to Hodgson’s vision, Cudjoe’s alertness and because Stuart Reardon, who is in his second spell at Bradford, had gone missing.

Reardon was nowhere to be seen when Hodgson’s cut-out pass was gratefully received by Cudjoe, who was presented with his second try on a plate by Hodgson’s precision crossfield kick high over the stranded Reardon’s head. When four Bradford defenders failed to hold up Shaun Lunt on the line, they were in danger of being embarrassed.

Huddersfield gained a reputation for wrestling tactics last season, but they fell foul of Steve Ganson’s less tolerant approach to holding down at the play-the-ball. Twice they succumbed from penalties in the last five minutes of the half. Orford set up first Reardon on the left and then Rikki Sheriffe on the opposite flank with a teasing kick that was shipped on by Paul Sykes.

In the second half, Huddersfield consolidated their 16-8 advantage with a scoring contribution by David Fa’alogo on the New Zealand World Cup-winning forward’s debut.

But with Robinson incurring the referee’s wrath for holding down, the Giants did well to hold out in the ten minutes without their scrum half.

Indeed, Hodgson stretched their lead with a penalty goal, before they were left short-handed a second time after Gilmour obstructed Kearney. Bradford’s only response was a second Reardon try.

Scorers: Huddersfield Giants: Tries: Cudjoe 2, Lunt, Fa’alogo. Goals: B Hodgson 4. Bradford Bulls: Tries: Reardon 2, Sheriffe.

Huddersfield Giants: B Hodgson; L Cudjoe, J Lolesi, M Lawrence, D Hodgson; K Brown, L Robinson; D Griffin, S Lunt, K Mason, L Gilmour, G Horne, D Faiumu. Interchange: E Crabtree, S Grix, D Fa’alogo, A Raleigh.

Bradford Bulls: D Halley; R Sheriffe, P Sykes, C Nero, S Readon; B Kearney, M Orford; N Scruton, H L’Estrange, A Lynch, G Hall, J Langley, S Menzies. Interchange: W Godwin, M Worrincy, C Kopczak, J Donaldson.

Referee: S Ganson.

•Castleford Tigers caused the biggest upset of the fledgeling season by beating Leeds Rhinos, the Engage Super League champions, 24-10 — their first win at Headingley Carnegie since 2002. It is the first time the Rhinos have lost one of their opening two league games in eight years. The Crusaders lost 38-6 at Wigan Warriors.