Major injury scare for Leeds Rhinos in 22-18 win v Wakefield Trinity as coach 'offended' by try decision
Leeds Rhinos regained third place in Betfred Super League after a thrilling 22-18 win over Wakefield Trinity, but the result came at a cost.
After leading 22-6 at half-time, Rhinos lost influential full-back Lachie Miller to a calf muscle injury at the break and he will undergo tests this week. Coach Brad Arthur confirmed: “About five minutes before half-time he said his calf was no good. We got him through to half-time then made the change.
“Until we get the scan on Monday we won’t know [how bad it is]. I was super-proud of him to brave it out to half-time, that gave us time to talk about the changes we needed to make. It cost us an interchange, so we were down to four in the second half. With the amount of possession and field position Wakefield had, I thought our forforwards did a really good job.”
Leeds seemed to be heading for a big win, but Wakefield had all the momentum in the second half and two tries in the final 40 from Trinity’s Max Jowitt – plus the late sin-binning of Rhinos forward James Bentley – left the hosts hanging on at the end before their fourth successive win was confirmed. Jowitt’s second touchdown was awarded by video official Tom Grant after an on-field signal of try from referee Chris Kendall, but Arthur felt there was a blatant obstruction in the build-up.
He fumed: “James Bentley can’t get off that man, he runs an outside shoulder. The guys making these decision need to understand the defensive systems. James Bentley can’t get off. I take offence to them saying James Bentley made the initial contact. His movements are to get off so I take offence to that as a coach. We don’t coach our players to do that, to take dives or do that deliberately. We’ve worked hard on our discipline and the boys need credit for it.”
Of Bentley’s yellow card, Arthur said: “I need to go back and watch it. James Bentley, we love him, his effort and physicality and we challenged him to have 80 minutes of concentration. He had 78 minutes, so he is getting closer. It was just an effort play, maybe he just got a little bit over-aggressive, but it was an important time of the game and he knew we needed some inside pressure. I don’t know, but we hung on, that’s the main thing.”