Leeds Rhinos: Coach McDermott happy to take an '˜ugly' win

Leeds winger Tom Briscoe celebrates the Rhinos first try against Huddersfield with his captain, Danny McGuire.

Rhinos followed-up victories over Catalans Dragons and Wakefield Trinity with a hard-fought 28-12 success at their bogey club Huddersfield Giants.

Leeds scored four tries to two in the first half and then shut Giants out after the break before adding a late touchdown to avenge three defeats at John Smith’s Stadium last year.

McDermott said: “It was an ugly game.

“We were good enough defensively to come away with a win.

“We got penalised a lot in the first half and that takes a lot of juice out of you. I don’t think we got any sort of rhythm or momentum back in the game.

“It was a stop-start, scrappy game, but we had to defend our tryline and that got us the game.

“We weren’t as good with the ball [as in the previous two games].

“For different reasons we found ourselves near our tryline a lot and it is good we can defend our way to a win.”

Liam Sutcliffe and Jamie Jones-Buchanan returned from injury for Leeds at the John Smith’s Stadium.

But forward Brett Delaney failed a fitness test and centre Jimmy Keinhorst (knee) and full-back Ashton Golding (concussion) were both hurt during the game.

Match report and pictures p36-37