Leeds cut St Helens' lead at the top of Super League XI to three points after coasting past Bradford Bulls at Odsal.


A solitary try from the diminutive Rob Burrow was all that separated the two sides in an electric opening half.


The Bulls, who lost Brett Ferres and Michael Withers just before kick-off to a virus, threw everything at the Rhinos to get back into the game.


But second-half tries from Willie Poching, Chev Walker, Ryan Bailey and Keith Senior led to a convincing win.



Despite their attacking flair, Leeds were indebted to their defence, which repeatedly kept Bradford at bay.


In the first half, Shontayne Hape had a good chance to score for the Bulls, only to spill the ball going for the line.


Then Ben Harris thought he had scored after intercepting a Senior pass only to be felled by the relentless Burrow.

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Sold out over a week ago, the biggest game in Super League promises to be a belter, the game already had all the ingredients: A full house; JP captaining the Rhinos; Welsh money grabber captaining the Bulls; McKenna and Bai returning; the Rhinos injury problems and now we hear that Bradford have given Wigan permission to speak to Brian Noble.


Without Kevin Sinfield this is going to be a tough game for us but we do have cover and I expect Gareth Ellis to take over at loose forward and do a good job.
Having said, that we have nobody with Sinfield’s range of kicking skills and we use the long game a lot against Bradford particularly against the “Volcano”. McGuire and mainly Burrow are going to have to be at their best in that department.


Also out of the 17 are Smith, Diskin and O’Neill. Danny Williams and Shane Millard will replace the first two, O’Neill is not yet ready to start in a game such as this.


JJB comes back into the squad and should make the 17, Ashley Gibson will probably be the man to miss out. The Bulls are missing just Paul Johnson through injury.


This again looks likely to be a close game, with the Bulls coming off a poor display against Warrington last week, they are likely to be fired up but if we can cover Sinfield's kicking game we can win it.


The Bulls have 10 points start on the coupon which I would take. They will not win the game though, I take the Rhinos by 8 again to take the two points and temporary league leadership.


Prediction: Leeds 22 v Bulls 14


Come on Leeds!!!

The game was called off just 45 minutes before the kick of due to a small part of the pitch being frozen and therefore too dangerous to play on it will now be played on:
Sunday 5th March at 3.00pm

All tickets purchased for the Friday game are valid for Sunday when we will still put 50 points past them.


P.S. I would like to take back my prediction that Hull will finish above the Rhinos this season, things are not right behind the scenes there and after last night’s performance I think they will struggle to make the top 5.

The unexpected sacking of Danny Ward gives Leeds an unexpected opportunity to bolster their woefully short back line with the quality winger I think we need if we are to win anything at all this season or indeed just be competitive.
Danny Ward could get us out of a real problem this season and help balance up what I believe is a currently unbalanced squad and depending on what sort of salary he was picking up we could bring in 2 new faces if we currently have just the 18 20/20 players as many pundits reckon.

The problem is who is going to let anybody that is any good go at this stage unless somebody wants to do a “swap” with Ward.
We have to do everything we can to bring in a quality winger such as the “Volcano” otherwise I fear a third or possibly fourth place finish this year.