Leaders Rhinos look in better place after comeback win

AFTER five rounds last season Leeds Rhinos were 10th in Super League with only one win to their name.

At the same stage now they are on a five-game hot streak, including a game against former top flight side Toronto Wolfpack which has been expunged from the season’s results and sit top of the table on points difference from Wigan Warriors and Castleford Tigers.

With a game in hand and even after the 66 points they rattled up against Toronto were wiped out, the eight-times champions are the competition’s leading scorers and have conceded fewer than any other team.

The league ladder makes pleasing reading for a club who have battled relegation in three of the past four campaigns and sets up a mouthwatering home fixture against last year’s Grand Final winners St Helens on Sunday.

Leeds’s latest victory, in their first match since Super League was suspended due to coronavirus in March, was a dramatic 2726 success against Huddersfield Giants two days ago.

Giants were the better team for 68 minutes and led 26-6, but Leeds scored four tries in the closing stages to send the game into extra-time, when Luke Gale’s drop goal won it.

It equalled Rhinos’ greatest comeback, a 30-20 victory over St Helens in 2003 after they had trailed 20-0 and though he knows his men were second-best for long stretches, coach Richard Agar feels they can take great heart from their late rally.

“It was a great learning curve for use – new rules and a new style of footy,” said Agar of Leeds’s first game under the six-again law.

“We have had a couple of games where we’ve been front-runners and they have been good victories and a couple where we’ve been down and come back and got ourselves together.”

Agar admitted: “Of course we want to improve,” but stressed: “At the same time we played with tremendous spirit and I thought we scored some outstanding tries again. When we held the ball we had a bit of energy.

“With 15 minutes to go they’d had 50 play-the-balls – that’s nearly 10 sets – more than us, but we came home flying and I think that’s a good sign.”

Forward James Donaldson is a doubt for Sunday’s game due to a back injury, but Agar is confident Richie Myler (head) and Konrad Hurrell (shoulder) will be available.