Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I don’t know about you but I’m not sure how much more of the Jekyll and Hyde alter ego I can take from Leeds Carnegie this season. I suppose that unlike Stephenson’s character, no one gets killed. But it could kill Leeds’ play-off hopes.

For sixteen glorious minutes on a cold, windy Friday night at Moseley, Leeds played sublime, free-flowing, running rugby. For the reminder of the match, bar a scant five minutes at the end, Leeds were defending for their lives. And it’ll come as no surprise that twenty of those minutes were with only fourteen men.

Leeds scored their first try after four minutes when Hampson scuttled through a pile of bodies to score and set up Clegg to covert. The resultant kick-off was knocked on and, shortly after, Leeds gave away a penalty in front the posts.

The second try came from a line out that quickly found its way to McColl who cut through the defence like a knife through butter to score. Soon after, McColl scored a wonder try. Leeds were running out of their own line, with Clegg finding McColl who dodged the Moseley players, finding Griffin, who threw a low pass that Burrows got hold of. Leeds kept the ball alive and Clegg put McColl through a gaping hole to score.

The all-important bonus point try was scored on the sixteen minute mark when Griffin score from just inside Moseley’s half, running through the opposition with ease.

With the score of 26-3 Leeds switched off, went to sleep, turned into their hideous alter ego - call it what you will. For the majority of the remainder of the first half Leeds were camped out in their own 22. And another ugly factor of Leeds’ play came into being - they were reduced to 14 men when Imiolek was binned for deliberately stopping the ball coming out. Rather than take three points, Moseley pushed for five but Leeds held them out until the end of the half.

Politicians, business big-wigs, all sorts of people who are tasked to lead people are given training on giving motivational speeches. The sooner someone takes Diccon Edwards aside and imparts some of the key skills of inspirational half time talks the better. The second half was a mirror image of the second quarter.

Moseley cut through the Leeds defence to score and it was 26-10 after 47 minutes. Leeds shored up their defence but spent almost all the second half inside their own half of the pitch as Moseley threw the kitchen sink at them.

Leeds were reduced, yet again, to 14 men as Barrow was sin binned and from the subsequent scrum Moseley breached the defence. With the conversion scored and Nilsen penalised for not rolling away, Leeds found themselves within a converted try of losing. The stage was set for some serious nail biting in the last ten minutes by the Leeds’ faithful who’d made the trip.

But within the last five, Leeds managed to hold of the ball, made some ground and were awarded a penalty to make the game safe. Moseley missed a late penalty that denied them a well deserved losing bonus point. By some miracle Leeds won their game in hand and climbed fourth in the table - grabbing the all-important final play-off place.

With two difficult games to go, it’s Leeds’ play-off place to give away. We need 160 minutes of ‘Jekyll’ Leeds and not allow the ‘Hyde’ Leeds to put in an appearance. Failure to do this against Bedford and Nottingham will mean Leeds will pay the price of their ‘crimes’ and our summer break will start before the end of the month.