Featherstone Rovers 6-62 Leeds Rhinos: Rhinos show their superiority in Super 8s Qualifiers
Last Updated: 08/08/16 10:07am
Last season’s treble winners Leeds Rhinos started their Super 8s Qualifiers campaign with an emphatic 62-6 victory at Featherstone.
England centre Kallum Watkins scored four tries as Leeds made an impressive start to the Super 8s Qualifiers with a 62-6 rout of Featherstone.
The Rhinos had to overcome some early anxious moments in their first league game outside the top flight since 1903 but they found their rhythm in the second half when they scored 44 of their points.
The consolation for Jon Sharp's part-timers was a crowd of 6,671 at the Big Fellas Stadium, Featherstone's highest of the summer era which will go some way to offsetting their financial problems.
Leeds finished the regular Super League season on a high with five wins from their last six matches and the return of skipper Danny McGuire enabled coach Brian McDermott to field his strongest team of the year, including 11 members of their victorious Grand-Final line-up from last October.
Rovers had 10 players with Super League experience, including Luke Briscoe and Jordan Baldwinson against their parent club, but they were no match for their awesome visitors whose full-time players looked a class apart after the break.
Leeds looked to be heading for a routine victory when quick hands enabled Watkins to open the scoring after only four minutes, taking a return pass from stand-off McGuire to score their first try.
Watkins then took Carl Ablett's offload to go through another gap in the Rovers defence to create a try for full-back Liam Sutcliffe, who added the conversion to make it 10-0.
Featherstone gradually established a toehold in the game, largely through the prompting of half-back Anthony Thackeray, who scored their only try after 28 minutes.
Centre Misi Taulapapa intercepted Brett Ferres pass 30 metres from his own line and, although Leeds winger Tom Briscoe managed to palm down substitute Luke Cooper's pass out wide, Thackeray kicked ahead to touch down.
Kyle Briggs' touchline conversion made it 10-6, but that was as good as it got for the home side as Leeds responded immediately, with Ablett sending centre Joel Moon over out wide.
Sutcliffe landed the difficult conversion, despite the distraction of an explosive noise coming from the crowd behind him, and also kicked a penalty on the stroke of half-time to extend his side's lead to 18-6.
If the Rhinos had any concern about playing up the slope in the second half, it was removed within four minutes of the re-start as they cut loose with five tries in the third quarter.
McGuire put Sutcliffe through a gap and Watkins finished off the move for his second try before getting substitute forward Mitch Achurch over after Featherstone allowed the ball to bounce from McGuire's towering kick.
Brimming with confidence, lively hooker James Segeyaro worked Ablett over for a try and Watkins cut a swathe through the heart of the home defence to get Briscoe over for his second.
Sutcliffe then went in for his second, following a break by winger Ryan Hall, and Leeds even scored two more tries while down to 12 men with substitute Jimmy Keinhorst sin-binned for holding down Ian Hardman in the tackle during a rare Featherstone foray into the Rhinos 20-metre area.
Moon took a Ferres offload to grab his second and Segeyaro's bullet-pass from dummy-half enabled Watkins to complete his hat-trick after 72 minutes and he then went 70 metres for his fourth three minutes from the end.
Sutcliffe rounded off the scoring with his ninth conversion to finish with a personal haul of 26 points.
