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Leeds Rhinos: We don’t want a Melbourne Storm repeat! - Ablett
Carl Ablett celebrates scoring a try against Manly.
Leeds Rhinos have got back down to business as they bid to avoid becoming world club chumps.
Rhinos were thrashed 38-20 at newly-promoted Castleford Tigers a week after their previous world title win – against Melbourne Storm four years ago – and back-rower Carl Ablett insisted they were desperate to prevent a repeat under similar circumstances this weekend.
Ablett said the players have returned to training fully focused on Sunday’s trip to another newly-promoted team Widnes Vikings.
And he believes the nine-day turnaround from last Friday’s Heinz Big Soup World Club Challenge win over Manly Sea Eagles could prove crucial.
Leeds – with a game in hand – are already three points adrift of leaders Warrington Wolves and St Helens in the Stobart Super League table and Ablett stressed they can’t afford to go into Sunday’s game at anything less than full pace.
“We’ve got nine days, so we could enjoy the win over the weekend, but then come Monday morning everybody was back into work,” said the loose-forward, who scored Rhinos’ final try against Manly.
“We are all professional enough to know that we’ve got to continue to build and hopefully stay in touch with the top teams.
“We were up and down last year, but we’ve got to be consistent and try and finish in the top-two.”
Widnes have lost their three Super League games so far, but Ablett is aware they will fancy their chances of causing an upset this weekend.
“Whoever we play, we never seem to get an easy game,” he said. “Widnes might be expecting us to be a little bit down, but the long turnaround helps us.
“We will be ready to go come Sunday and we’ll be looking to put in a performance. We’ve got the World Club out of the way, we have been crowned world champions and that’s great.
“We can look forward to Super League now and concentrate on that.”
The victory last week will give Rhinos’ league campaign a major boost, according to Ablett, pictured below.
Rhinos struggled after losing to Manly in 2009 and Melbourne the following year and the back-rower said: “It’s tough when they come over here and give you a bit of a hiding.
“It is hard to take, but it’s a totally different feeling when you win. We can be happy with our performance last week and I think we did ourselves justice.
“Thinking back to the Challenge Cup final against Warrington a couple of years ago, if you don’t do yourself justice in a big game you end up kicking yourselves.
“That’s tough, but it was good to come out of the game and think ‘we did all right there’. We performed, we weren’t perfect by any means, but it was a decent performance.
“We won by 14 points and that is a pretty good effort.”
Last week’s victory completed a remarkable treble for Ablett, who was a scorer in the Challenge Cup final, Grand Final and World Club Challenge, within the space of six months.
Ablett’s Old Trafford try came from a few metres out and he admitted he had even less running to do for his score against Manly, touching down after the defence had failed to deal with Kevin Sinfield’s kick.
“It’s a good job,” he said. “I wouldn’t have got over otherwise. With Bails (Ryan Bailey) and Jonesy (Jamie Jones-Buchanan) going down, we were running out of players.
“I had to do 80 minutes and it felt like we were defending for the whole game, so to sneak a try at the end was very pleasing.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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