Hull KR skipper claims Leeds Rhinos star was “reckless”

Hull KR skipper Elliot Minchella had his say on the two yellow cards to Leeds Rhinos players that helped his side turn things around and claim the win over Rohan Smith’s men.

There were suggestions by some that both James Donaldson and Sam Lisone could have been red carded for their high tackles whilst Leeds Rhinos boss Rohan Smith suggested that the latter could gave avoided a card all together.

After the game on Sky Sports, Minchella was firstly asked about the Donaldson tackle. He said:

“I think it was right call. I think Oli is falling forward so, you know, he has lost his high a little bit so I think it probably gets away with it a little bit there, but I think you know contact with the head, you can’t do that. I think you’ve probably got the right call with that one.”

He would go on to add that it is a big change but one Hull KR have targeted: “Yeah well you know we got told about that in the pre-season and we’ve trained for it so everyone’s aware of what the rules are it’s just when you’re in the heat of the battle sticking to them obviously it’s a change for us it’s a new sort of interpretation so you’ve got to be squeaky clean and we want to be well disciplined and fortunately for us they wasn’t and we benefited from 10 minutes in the big.”

Hull KR star suggested Leeds Rhinos forward was “reckless”

Minchella would then go on to explain how Hull KR have trained to be ready for the new rules whilst saying that Donaldson was perhaps “reckless” or “sloppy” in this tackle.

He said: “Brett Delaney, laid out the rules to us, especially those middles, you’ve got to be careful, you can’t be reckless like that or sloppy if you want to call it, and then it costs your team 10 minutes, especially when the middle man goes down, everyone else suffers, so you’ve got to train for it.

“We train with 12 men, 11 men, and then obviously in the games, when that happens, we’ve got a bit of muscle memory with that so, you’ve just got to be disciplined and that’s the game, the rules are the rules and we’ve got to adapt to them and you know, we just crack on.”

On the Lisone yellow card, of which he was the victim, Minchella added: “Yeah, I think again, I don’t think he meant to probably hit me in the head.”