Salford Red Devils 16 Leeds Rhinos 46 Match Report
Two fabulous tries, in the final five minutes of their home fixture with Leeds Rhinos, saw the Salford Red Devils’ Academy side finish the game on a high, after they had struggled to breach the visitors’ line, for most of the preceding seventy-five minutes.
This was hardly surprising because the Rhinos have proven to be the competition’s standout side, having carried all before them in each of their fixtures, thus far. On Saturday, they had got off to a great start, opening their account as early as the second minute, by completing their second set with a try in the right-hand corner, to take a four-point lead.
This setback, however, served only to strengthen the Red Devils’ resolve, and it has to be said that for the greater period of the first half they went set-for-set with the physically superior Leeds outfit, in a number of arm-wrestles, in which they succeeded in limiting their opponents to three scores only, and a sixteen-point lead after twenty-five minutes.
Those three scores, however, were the underlying difference between the sides. The Rhinos were able to turn chances their chances into points, whereas Salford, for all their impressive approach work were unable to come away with anything to show for it all. Three times, players on the edges were prevented from grounding the ball, having got themselves to, or even over, the line.
They more than made up for this in defence, however, when they thwarted a number of Leeds’s onslaughts on their try line with determined last-ditch tackles, some of which took the would-be scorer into touch.
Thankfully, their fortune changed on thirty minutes, when, having forced a goal-line drop-out, they capitalised on the extra set of possession by putting right winger, Mason Riley, in at the corner, following a good bout of passing, although the visitors added four further points of their own, six minutes later, for a 4-20 half-time lead.
A volley of five further tries during the second half, however, made for a quite unbalanced representation of the game as a whole, and having plugged away throughout it all, with little success, suddenly the Reds found their efforts rewarded in the final minutes.
Left centre, Sam Hill, managed to get himself onto the end of James Hodgkiss’s well-placed end-of-set kick, and he was able to go over between the posts.
This so inspired the rest of the team that they added another, two-minutes from time, which started with a great break by fullback Rafael van Osselaer, who, on coming to the Rhinos’ fullback, handed on to the supporting Rhyley Hyde, and the scrum-half went over, again between the posts giving Dan Jenkinson his second successful conversion of the afternoon.
Taking into account the prowess of the opposition in all fixtures, coach, Danny Barton had good reason to feel well-satisfied with many aspects of his team’s performance: “I was particularly pleased with the effort the whole team put in, because they were up against the best side in the competition.
“In the four games they had played so far, Leeds had conceded only twenty-two points in total, and we succeeded in scoring sixteen in only the one game.
“If you look at the number of times we came close to scoring in the first-half, had we done so, then, the half time score would have looked quite different.
“Rory Greenhalgh had a great game when he came on from the bench, whilst Rafa van Osselaer caused a lot of trouble for the opposition’s defence. Rhyley Hyde certainly deserved his try for all the effort he had put in throughout the game.”
The academy’s next home game will be in a fortnight’s time, against Wigan, on the 31st May.
SALFORD
Rafael van Osselaer, Mason Riley, Charlie Bailey, Sam Hill, Joe Griffiths, Dan Jenkinson, Rhyley Hyde, Harrison Hope, Finlay Walker, Matthew Eden, Noah Appleby, Sam Littler, Jacob Walker.
Interchanges:
Rory Greenhalgh, James Hodgkiss, Cohen Addi, Ellis Clarke, Lucas Roper.
