Salford Red Devils vs Leeds Rhinos review

 Rohan Smith’s Leeds career got off to a less than auspicious start with a 23-8 defeat at the hands of the Salford Red Devils at the AJ Bell stadium. Ash Handley and Mikolaj Oledzki were the try scorers for Leeds in a game where the away team could not recover from conceding  3 first half tries.

After a scoreless first ten minutes Salford scored two tries in as many minutes with the first coming when Ken Sio dived over in the right hand corner. This was after a lovely move from Salford that saw Brierley crabbing across to the right of the pitch before passing to Sneyd and then Brodie Croft who released Deon Cross through a gap between Handley and Broadbent. The centre was then able to pass to Sio as Myler closed in. Two minutes later it was the opposite corner in which Salford were scoring as this time it was the Leeds right edge defence that was left reeling as Tim Lafai broke through before passing to Joe Burgess to score.

At 10-0 down there was some hope for the travelling Leeds fans as Ash Handley made it a trio of tries for wingers in the first 20 minutes. Inside the Salford 20m zone Kruise Leeming found Rhyse Martin on a short ball and the second rower was only able to be tackled round the waist. This allowed the PNG international to spin a pass out to Ash Handley who was in space due to the Salford edge defenders rushing up expecting a longer pass from Leeming.

Any glimmer of hope for the away fans was extinguished by a third Salford try. This time the try came a little fortuitously as a Brodie Croft grubber kick deflected off the right post and a Salford shin before it was picked up by the Salford Hooker Andy Ackers to score.

After a high scoring first half, it took until the final 15 minutes for the scoreboard to be troubled. This was first through a Marc Sneyd drop goal on 67 minutes and then a Ryan Brierley try on the 69th minute. The Scottish fullback had been looking dangerous all game and finally got his reward when he backed up a break by Brodie Croft who had found a gap between Brad Dwyer and Zane Tetevano.  Leeds did pick up a final consolation try with 4 minutes to go when Mikolaj Oledzki was able to find a gap in the Salford defence close to the line to score.

After the positivity of the previous two victories while playing with a much weaker team, it was disappointing to see this Leeds team revert back to their form of earlier in the season. Looking back at the game it was clear that the players Salforfd were able to recall were much closer to match fitness and match sharpness compared to their Leeds counterparts. Players like David Fusitu’a and Richie Myler just looked completely off the pace of a Super league match.

As mentioned in my preview I believed that the key to this game was in the spine and on the day the Salford spine of Brierley, Croft, Sneyd and Ackers at hooker dominated the game and ultimately gave their side the victory. There was simply a much greater level of cohesion between this quartet of players playing in their natural positions in comparison to a Leeds side that are still relying on Kruise Leeming to fill in at halfback, a position he seems to be struggling with. 

Despite the stark difference between the two sides based on the scores, it does not quite tell the full story of the game. Salford in the week released a video of their best defensive efforts which highlighted a number of try saving tackles their players made to prevent the Rhinos from scoring. This shows that in spite of only scoring two tries the Rhinos were able to create a number of further chances to score. If Leeds scored any of these chances who knows how the game may have panned out.

Although nobody among the coaching staff will have been under any illusions regarding the work that needs to be done to turn this team around, Sunday’s result will have just highlighted how far there is to go. First on the agenda should be finding a way to get Leeming back to hooker and get a pair of halfbacks playing together who can start to develop an understanding.

Thank you for reading and remember All Leeds aren’t we.