Huddersfield 12-28 Leeds: Rhinos keep up the charge

Match Stats

Huddersfield tries: Ta'ai (18), McGillvary (21)
Conversions: Brough (19,22)

Leeds tries: Briscoe (5), Hall (10), Ablett (25), Parcell (33), Baldwinson (79)
Conversions: Golding (11,60), Sutcliffe (70,79)

Match Report

Improving Leeds made it three wins in a row with a 28-12 derby success at Huddersfield to climb up to second place in the Betfred Super League.

The Rhinos set the platform with a strong first-half performance but could never completely shake off their gritty opponents until Jordan Baldwinson scored their fifth try in the last minute of the match.

The Giants had their moments, particularly when Lee Gaskell and Kruise Leeming had the ball, but they have now gone four games without a win.

With Joel Moon doing an able job as a makeshift scrum-half, it was all Leeds early on as they caught their hosts cold with two tries from their wingmen inside the first 10 minutes.

Full-back Ashton Golding made the running for the first, running at the heart of the Huddersfield defence before sending Tom Briscoe over at the corner while Ryan Hall beat his England team-mate Jermaine McGillvary to touch down a grubber kick from ex-Giants forward Brett Ferres.

Golding added one conversion to make it 10-0 but Huddersfield's response was immediate and emphatic.

Gaskell, playing at scrum-half, took on the Leeds line and produced a short pass to get second rower Ukuma Ta'ai crashing over for their first try and three minutes later combined with full-back Darnell McIntosh to send McGillvary over at the corner for his fifth try of the season.

Danny Brough added both conversions to give his side the lead but the Rhinos managed to wrestle back the advantage and made the most of their good fortune to open up an 18-12 advantage,

The Giants defence were confused by a bouncing ball and opened up invitingly for second rower Carl Ablett to ghost through for a try before McIntosh failed to clear the danger posed by Ablett's kick which allowed hooker Matt Parcell to touch down.

Golding, who had kicked seven from seven the previous week against Wakefield, failed with both conversion attempts so, despite scoring four tries to two, the visitors led only 18-12 and Huddersfield might have been level had the inexperienced McIntosh made use of a clear two-man overlap just before the break.

It was 12-a-side for a spell early in the second half after Brough and Ablett were sin-binned by referee Ben Thaler for trading punches but the game became scrappy as errors began to creep into the play of both teams.

When Thaler blew up for a third offence of players moving off the mark, Leeds took the opportunity to open up a two-score lead with Golding succeeding with the penalty kick at goal.

Huddersfield continued to press and the busy McIntosh was denied a try after gathering Brough's high kick to the Leeds line, Thaler ruling he failed to ground the ball.

Golding was forced off after being hurt in that collision but Leeds had a ready-made replacement in Liam Sutcliffe, who was a late addition to the bench when Brett Delaney pulled out through injury and wrapped up the scoring with another penalty 10 minutes from the end before converting Baldwinson's late try.

Match Reaction

Leeds coach Brian McDermott: "We'll savour that. It was an ugly game for both teams. I don't think anybody enjoyed it.

"I won't be too down about it, though. We got penalised a lot in the first half and that takes so much juice out of you. I don't think we got any rhythm or momentum back and the game became a scrappy, stop-start affair.

"They probably let us off the hook with their finishing but I suppose we were just good enough defensively to come away with the win

"We weren't as good with the ball as last week but it's good that we can defend our way to a win."

Huddersfield coach Rick Stone: "It's a disappointment. We were in the contest for the majority of the game. We started a little bit slow but we got on even terms.

"The Danny Brough sin bin didn't help our cause. I thought there were some tries there if we could hang on to the ball but we made 10 second-half errors which makes it tough to win matches. We didn't give ourselves a chance.

"In the last 20 minutes we defended our line really strongly and Leeds gave us some respect by kicking a couple of penalty goals. They managed the game better than us at the crucial times."