Leeds Rhinos head coach Brian McDermott praises his side's battling spirit

Leeds coach Brian McDermott praised the way his side overturned a 12-point half-time deficit to defeat Hull FC 43-12 at the KC Stadium.

The Rhinos scored all their points in the second period after a lacklustre opening 40 minutes and McDermott was impressed by the response of his players.

"That's an impressive stat, something we're really pleased about," McDermott said of the turnaround.

"Hull are almost unplayable when they are like that and we were waiting for the momentum to change, which didn't happen in the first half.

"They didn't make too many errors but, at the same time I didn't think we were miles behind. That's what the players spoke about at half-time.

"We certainly needed to change one or two things but it was never an attitude change. Once we were on the front foot, we were going to score some decent tries."

Leeds skipper Kevin Sinfield kicked 15 points to take him up to fourth place in rugby league's all-time scoring list, overhauling former Leigh, Warrington and Bradford stand-off John Woods' total of 3,985.

Sinfield is now only 55 points away from matching third-placed Gus Risman's total of 4,050 but a long way behind Neil Fox, who holds the record with 6,220 points.

"It's big is that," added McDermott. "Kev's notched off some landmarks in his time, although he has got some way to catch Neil Fox."

Hull coach Lee Radford was forced to give a debut to teenage second-rower Jansin Turgut, the England academy captain, after Liam Watts pulled out in the warm-up due to a hamstring injury.

With another three players from his original 19-man squad also succumbing to injury, Radford had to look to Australian centre Steve Michaels, just a week after it was announced in Queensland that an arrest warrant had been issued for him as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking.

That left the Black and Whites with a lightweight bench which ultimately proved their undoing.

"We didn't have a bench," Radford said. "We had a full-back playing at nine and we had to give a kid a debut when someone pulled out in the warm-up. I was panicking because I didn't know if we had time to make the change.

"We ran out of numbers. Gaz Ellis wouldn't have normally played but he put his hand up.

"The first half was really pleasing, defensively the energy we showed was really good but we ran out of gas, simple as that.

"It was smart by them. They saved their interchanges for the second half. They knew we were patched up and they went for our jugular."

Radford again defended his decision to play Michaels, saying: "We've had no dialogue from anyone in Australia. I have no issues with it."