I thought it was a pretty good game, but with maybe a few too many errors, including a couple of bad calls by the officials.

Thought Melbourne looked good going forward given they've got a couple of weeks pre-season to go and their scramble defence was outstanding...they do look a very fit side.

Leeds should have taken the 2 points with about 10minutes to go...they were on the ascendancy and they would have got the ball back.....some of their other decision making was questionable.

All in all, a great advert for the game in front of a packed house.....all good.

Great game with some phenomenal players all over the field. Great crowd, a full house with a great atmosphere minus that god forsaken band.

The ebb and flow was superb especially when Leeds started scoring, but if you ever want to see game management and a relaxed way of going about your business then step up Cooper Cronk! What a superb intelligent player. For their sheer lunacy and width, Leeds were a great opponent. Watkins was stellar but Ablett was a force tonight.

The refs werent great, some of the forward pass calls were astonishing. The one against Melbourne when Craig Bellamy's reaction nearly destroyed the North Stand was a particularly horrific one. There were niggles but Thaler let them play, which in games with players of such quality on the field was a good move.

Better side won, cant complain. A great advert for RL. Time to expand the WCC into a mini tournament in its own right IMO.

Also as a neutral my ratings for Leeds were,

Watkins - a couple of nervous moments but also touches of class and quality, a shame Hardaker was out which would have meant he played in his best position.

Vickery - really struggled in my opinion and Ben Jones-Bishop would've been a handy addition to the Rhinos team.

Moon - was ok in attack and defence.

Ablett - really strong all game, just lacked that extra yard in pace which is not unexpected.

Hall - good try and solid game in general.

McGuire - really disappointing.

Sinfield - didn't really stamp his authority and kicking game was ordinary.

Ward - outstanding in the first half, huge future for the 19yo.

JJB - didn't have much impact but scored a good try.

Delaney - tried hard as always.

Peacock - tried his heart out but some of his offloads were poor.

Burrow - the conditions didn't really suit him.

Leuluai - started ok but faded.

Achurch - disappointing performance in the short time he was on.

Kirk - played ok but not enough impact for a bench player.

McShane - will be remembered for his bad miss for the melbourne try early in the 2nd half.

Clarkson - came on late, strange tactics by the Leeds coach.

Agree 100% with Gutterfax on this one, if Leeds decision making was better and they didn't panic and try and score with every play in the Melbourne 20 I think they might have nicked it, did Leeds try to force a drop out in the game?

Also think Watkins may be the next Englishman to go to the NRL too. Looks a class act.

Such a shame a game as entertaining as that can't be played in front of 50k or 60k.

It sold out what more can they do other than play it at a football ground (I nelive they got 40,000 at elland road) but this just puts money in another sports pocket.

The attendance was good,i'm not deriding that, but do you not think it gets people/press/tv, etc, talking about the sport a bit more when they see a large attendance for a game?

I just find myself thinking of the nfl game and that club ru game that are held at wembley and bring massive crowds in.

I thought the match was excellent. Melbourne were the dominant side in the ‘arm wrestle’ and that forced Leeds to run a few high risk plays, some came off and some didn’t but it was really entertaining to watch

Player wise the big stars for Melbourne came and stood up, Smith managed the ruck in his usual understated but effective way and Cronk bossed the game. Slater (love him or hate him) is almost impossible to defend against at times. For Leeds, I thought Watkins was the stand out – yes he made a couple of errors playing out of position but he was always the biggest threat with the ball. As someone above said, if Hardaker was fit and Watkins in the centre it would have made Leeds even more dangerous. Peacock may have thrown a few loose offload but his work rate was outstanding and was the one Leeds forward that consistently won the contact area

All in all a great game and I for one but be keen to see the challenge extended – seeing the top 3 or 4 teams in the SL go head to head with the NRL big guns would be superb... clearly there is a risk that the SL teams would come out second best but I think we have seen from recent challenge games the SL teams are competitive

I agree with all of that bar the last four lines.
Internationals need to be built up first, if this game today was played in Australia in May it would be a Cricket Score IMO.
We do not need to see English Clubs humiliated as that will not help the English Games perception in Australia with the same Fans we are asking to support the Test matches.

I remember the extended world club challenge well and was hugely disappointed when the English clubs suffered badly. I think we have to have some faith that the SL is a better comp now and the top teams are quality sides. Not saying they would blow away the NRL teams but it wouldn’t be embarrassing

I do agree that the international game comes first though and is top priority

There is a chance that England will win the World Cup this year, stranger things have happened.

Totally agree. I thought Leeds were going to win it after managing to stay in it through the early Melbourne onslaught but then they turned it up a notch in the second half and should have won by more with having had a perfectly good try ruled out.

Agree with that it was an excellent game & like you say if Leeds had kept their cool in the last 15 minutes or so they should of won it. As excellent as the Aussies defense was, Leeds seemed to stop using dummy runners and it all became a bit to frantic, which certainly made it easier for Melbourne to defend against.

There's one thing for certain, is that both sides gave everything for the cause last night and should feel very proud of their effort.

If only Burrows had held on to that simple pass, they'd have scored back to back tries and who knows what would have happened after that.

No complaints about the quality of rugby on display - however, I would say that Headingly was far from quality on the hospitality front. Having paid for the top hospitality package to take Leeds based clients to the game I found that the pre-match presentation from Hetherington was far from in depth. We then had to queue in a bottle neck to get to our seats just in time for kick off and then found ourselves perched behind a large metal stanchion meaning that we could hardly see much action towards the new stand. I expected much better and will not be returning to Headingly other than with the cheapest tickets I can get!

Which package did you go for? The top price bracket for corporates at Headingley is the Lewis Jones suite which gives you seats in the Carnegie Stand so it can't have been the top package unless you are one of the main club sponsors?

Either way, I'd complain to Rob Oates - happiness for the prawn sandwich eaters is something Leeds DO take seriously.

A great game, plenty of ifs and buts. Thought the right side got the result as they won the arm wrestle and was always ahead on the scoreboard - defence win these games. Leeds needed a bit more compusure at the end - with Peacock three fail offloads really highlighting their issues.

Thought Leeds played well and Watkins and Ward where huge, for such young players and big futures ahead if we can keep them in the game (Union ££££'s).

I also need to mention thought Thaler was excellent and if you can only say a couple of forward passes, i'm sure the ref would take that.

We were in the Platinum Suite which was whre Hetherington, Big Fat Nigel and the current RFL Chairman were wining and dining. It was the Diamond Package on the RFL website - I just felt that for the kind of money we paid it was a totally unspecial experience compared to hospitality we have had at other stadia.

I wouldn't put my mortgage on it!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought it was a great game, great spectacle. 10 of those on FTA every year would be an incredible boost for the game.

How big is the chance


in all fairness i think the only way we are going to beat the australians is through the forwads because their backs are better than ours no matter how good sinfield and tomkins are