Nathan Brown put on a brave face after watching Huddersfield suffer their first defeat since March, a 27-20 defeat at Catalan Dragons.
The Giants conceded seven points in the last five minutes to go down in Perpignan on Saturday and miss the chance to return to the top of Super League.
"Apart from a couple of players, I thought we weren't quite good enough to beat a good side today," Brown said.
"Apart from Michael Lawrence and Dale Ferguson, I thought every other player in our team didn't produce a performance they needed to produce.
"It's been a long time since we lost so it's no good slitting our wrists.
"We're halfway through the year and no one is on more points than us and we're in the Challenge Cup quarter-finals so I can't be too hard on the guys. We'd have taken that at the start of the year."
Huddersfield went in front three times thanks to tries from Luke Robinson, Scott Grix and Dale Ferguson and drew level at 20-20 when centre Joe Wardle went over on 71 minutes.
They also had tries from Luke George and Greg Eden disallowed and Brown bemoaned the absence of a video referee.
"It's the only sport in the world that's professional where you have a video referee for one game and don't have it for the others," he said.
"The full-back definitely scored and I don't know whether Luke George knocked on or not. It's not the referee's fault, it the fault of the people who run the game.
"We didn't deserve to win the game but we deserved the right to have a video referee."
The Dragons led 20-16 thanks to tries from Clint Greenshields, Damien Cardace, Leon Pryce and Remi Casty and finished the stronger side despite losing influential scrum-half Scott Dureau early in the second half with a knee injury.
Thomas Bosc moved inside from the wing to plug the gap and put over the drop goal that edged his side back in front, before Vincent Duport made sure with his side's fifth try two minutes from the end.
The Catalans are now third in the table, just two points behind Wigan and Huddersfield with a game in hand, after maintaining their unbeaten record at Stade Gilbert Brutus in 2012.
"It was nice to have another win at home to keep our unbeaten home record clean," said coach Trent Robinson.
"I think we gained the win physically. Most of our line worked really hard and our first impact was always good and solid. That was a big part of today and held us together.
"Last year we probably would have fallen away from the game and been happy with putting in a good performance but when it got back to 20-20 we defended our line well and set up for the drop goal.
"I thought we were good structurally but our execution was average. We created some opportunities that we didn't take but the physical side held us in the game."
Dureau will go for scans on Monday to determine the extent of a knee injury that threatens to rule him out of next Sunday's Carnegie Challenge Cup quarter-final game against Warrington in Perpignan.
"Scott has a bit of a soreness on the outside of his knee," said Robinson.
"What that means at the moment, I'm not sure. Hopefully it's nothing but it could be a week, two weeks or a month, I'm not sure.
"It's not right so we'll get that checked out on Monday."
