A Rainy Day At The Office

By leedsrhinos.biz
July 15 2007

Well it didn’t go too well at the home of the pie on Thursday, as we once again got beaten by the Wigan Warriors. It’s not unusual – this is the eighth time out of nine games that Brian Noble has beaten Tony Smith’s side. We bring you the thoughts on last Thursdays game.

Wigan: (4) 18
Tries: Colbon, Fletcher
Goals: Richards (5)

Leeds: (0) 2
Goals: Sinfield

Some people say Brian Noble ‘owns’ Tony Smith, and according to the stats, he does.

The man in charge told the press;

"The conditions were a leveller. It was always going to be difficult to score tries in those conditions.

"We had some field position early in the game but they defended really well throughout. So did we. "Both teams were very committed to defence. Unfortunately, both teams left their attack at home. "We made way too many errors, some uncharacteristic errors by some very good players. They are feeling pretty bad about it."

If Tony Smith has shown the team to do anything this week, it’s how to turn from heroes to zeroes in less that seven days. Both Wigan and Leeds didn’t play particularly well, but it was whoever coped better with the conditions, at that was the Warriors.

The only good thing that happened this weekend was the fact that Bradford got a two point deduction for breeching the salary cap, which effectively means their win over the Saints in once again, awful conditions is awful. It means the top of the engage Super League looks like this;

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	PTS
1	St Helens	20	14	0	6	621	303	28
2	Leeds	20	14	0	6	523	375	28
3	Bradford	20	14	0	6	614	442	26
4	Wigan	20	11	0	9	449	385	22
5	Harlequins RL	20	9	2	9	389	438	20
6	Wakefield	20	9	1	10	451	496	19

It seems that the decider for who will come runners up to Saints will be decided when we meet local rivals Bradford at Odsal on the 2^ndSeptember.

After next weeks clash back home at the Headingley Carnegie with Wakey, here are the remaining fixtures:

BREAK – CC SEMI FINALS

August
05 Harlequins A
10 Salford H
17 Hull KR H

September
02 Bradford A
07 Hull H
14 Wakefield H

Next week we promise to actually bring you a match day report as well as the thoughts! The challenge now is to put this behind us and concentrate on that much needed second place in the league.