YEP rugby league writer Peter Smith reflects on Leeds Rhinos' loss to Warrington Wolves at Magic Weekend.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Yet another magic weekend defeat for Leeds Rhinos, who have a very poor recent record at this event.
00:07But today's 24-6 loss to Warrington Wolves at Ellerode wasn't one of their worst performances of the season by a long chalk.
00:16They trailed 8-0 at half-time. It was only 2-0 until right on the stroke of half-time when Lachie Miller lost the ball in a big hit and George Williams picked up to score.
00:26The game turned in the second half on a couple of big calls really. I thought Warrington had knocked on and that wasn't given.
00:34Then moments later there seemed to be a one-on-one ball steal very close to Warrington's line.
00:40That was given as a penalty to the Wolves. They then got another penalty for an incident which led to Dave Fussey too being sent in.
00:52While he was off the field they scored a couple of tries. Leeds did pull a try back in the second half.
00:58Very much deserved for Paul Momorowski from a lovely kick by Rhys Martin.
01:02But Leeds had Sam Nassone sent in along with Roderick Tye after a scuffle also in the second period.
01:09Leeds got it back to 18-6. That was probably been a fairer reflection.
01:14But Warrington, Matt Duffy scored his hat-trick very late on and that really I thought inflated the scoreline a bit more than Leeds deserved.
01:23There were some good individual performances. Lachie Miller again did some really good things and some not so good things.
01:29I thought Ash Hanley was very good. He's playing through the pain barrier with a damaged hand.
01:34He needs an operation on that but I said he'll play until the operation's booked and I thought he was good.
01:39I thought Momorowski was good. Gerard O'Connor gave them something a little bit different when he came off the bench.
01:46Rhys Martin I thought had a real dig and as I say his excellent kick led to the try.
01:53But overall just not quite good enough. Two winning lapses, incidents going against them.
01:58They let Danny Walker run from dummy half far too often, switched up that marker and that was really costly.
02:05That's something they're going to have to sort out and just put out the errors from the game.
02:09If they can do that, there's a making to the good side here.
02:12But the best team definitely won but Leeds is better I think than the scoreline suggests.