Rugby League: Long flash of genius goes astray for Saints

Oct 15 2007 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

These are days of high standards indeed and even Saints – Long, Cunningham, Pryce, Roby, Gardner, Wellens, Gidley and the rest – could not raise their game in the face of such awesome opposition on Saturday night.

It was a very different story for Daniel Anderson's opposite number and new Great Britain coach Tony Smith, as his last season at Leeds ended the same as his first in 2004, in an explosion of deafening noise and towering fireworks that Saints are more used to getting swallowed up in than standing and enviously watching.

Not that they chose that option, instead quickly retreating to the dressing room to reflect on an evening that always seemed to be going against them.

After Long's early miss that reflected a generally nervy opening, it was down to Leeds captain Kevin Sinfield to open the scoring, becoming his club's first player to score a point in every match of a campaign when he slotted a penalty in the 16th minute.

It paved the way for Brent Webb's opening try three minutes later while in reply Saints were uncharacteristically ponderous in possession. In the first half they ended two sets of six close to the Leeds line by handing over possession instead of getting in a kick.

Long's moment of magic gave Lee Gilmour the space to send Man Of Steel Roby over but the blue shirts continued to look more menacing and Danny McGuire was unfortunate when he gathered his own kick then sent another towards the corner for Donald only to see it trickle agonisingly over the touchline.

With his side in the ascendancy, Smith seemed to forego the team talk and spend the half-time break surgically extracting his team's nerves and inhibitions instead – hence a second half performance that blew Saints away.

The sense of urgency was summed up by Ali Lauititi's 50th-minute try. When the New Zealander collected the ball from Lee Smith the Rhinos still had a full set of tackles to come but he hared for the corner like it was the last play of the season and flung himself over the line.

Three minutes later that same left-hand corner witnessed the try of the game after Webb and Senior combined to release Donald, who finally showed his true class by teasing Wellens towards him, then killing him off with a devastating change of pace.

Two minutes later, man of the match Rob Burrow added a drop goal to put Saints three scores adrift and they never looked like finding the inspiration to get them.

Leeds-born 21-year-old Lee Smith plucked Sinfield's bomb from the sky to seal the victory 12 minutes from time, then Jamie Jones-Buchanan finished off an endless passing move, which turned out to be the last of the game.

The video referee inspected it for a double movement before putting his verdict up on the screen – but it had all descended into car crash TV for the Saints supporters – who were still around to see it – long before then.