Warrington crush Leeds 52-18 to go top of Super League
By PA Sport
Last Updated: 28/05/16 7:21am
Warrington took full advantage of Leeds' fragility to inflict a nine-try 52-18 mauling of the reigning Super League champions.
Trailing only 18-12 after a tightly-contested first half, the Rhinos collapsed in all-too familiar fashion after the break as the Wolves cruised to victory to return to the top of the table and leave their opponents rooted to the bottom.
Stand-off Kurt Gidley contributed 20 points with a try and eight conversions in Warrington's highest-ever Super League score against Leeds.
To compound their misery, the Rhinos lost England full-back Zak Hardaker with a shoulder injury just before half-time.
Reeling from back-to-back defeats by Wakefield and Castleford, Warrington were boosted by the return of Australian playmaker Chris Sandow, who was Super League's outstanding player up to tearing a hamstring two months into the season, and back-up hooker Brad Dwyer, who made an even bigger impact on his return from a three-month injury lay-off.
Leeds took just 90 seconds to open the scoring at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, centre Jimmy Keinhorst pouncing on Danny McGuire's grubber kick for his seventh try in his last seven games.
But when second rower Brett Delaney lost the ball on his own 20-metre line, Warrington took full advantage as left winger Gene Ormsby crossed unopposed for an equalising score after taking Ben Currie's cut-out pass.
Undeterred, Leeds put the home defence under tremendous pressure but without being able to find a chink and Tony Smith's men struck on the counter-attack, with winger Tom Lineham touching down from Sandow's accurate crossfield kick.
It got even better for the Wolves when Dwyer dummied his way over within minutes of replacing Daryl Clark and Gidley's third conversion made it 18-6.
Instead of collapsing in familiar fashion, the Rhinos battled back as second rower Brett Ferres scored his first try for the club after McGuire's grubber kick had rebounded kindly off a defender and Liam Sutcliffe kicked his second goal to trim the deficit to just six points.
The champions had a let-off when Dwyer lost the ball going for the line but they suffered a major blow on the stroke of half-time when Hardaker went off and they conceded two further tries within 10 minutes of the restart.
Their failure to deal with Sandow's high kick gifted a score to centre Ryan Atkins while smart handling from Gidley and full-back Stefan Ratchford created a second for Ormsby.
Ratchford squandered two clear-cut chances after twice being put clear by offloads from Ben Westwood and Ashton Sims but they finally found a way to the line on 55 minutes to put the game beyond the visitors.
Both teams were a man down at that point after Sims and Brad Singleton were sin-binned after coming to blows and it was still 12-a-side when Sandow put Gidley through a yawning gap in the Leeds defence for the Wolves' seventh try.
Ferres grabbed a second try for the visitors but Clark twice took advantage of their tiring defence to cross for tries as the Wolves finished in total control.
