Leeds Rhinos boss accuses Salford Red Devils of “gamesmanship”

Even though Leeds Rhinos got the win in their season opener against Salford Red Devils on Friday night, Rohan Smith wasn’t entirely pleased.

The Leeds Head coach wasn’t impressed with the number of stoppages within the game as he said:

“You know we’ve stopped for Chris Atkin to get his head checked, neck checked, then his ankle and then his knee and eventually got a green card. But even on the back of that, they’ve still had two minutes rest. Then straight after that, Cust gets injured and they stop the game for him, but he didn’t want to get a green card, so they stop the game, it stops, and then they go again.

“What are we doing? The game is about attrition. It’s about tough blokes getting up and playing on. Of course, someone’s got a neck injury, concussion, a bone sticking out. Everyone knows those situations and you take care of the player 100%. James Bentley last year, that was a 10, 15 minute, maybe even longer stoppage at Huddersfield because player safety is number one. But, yeah, we stopped for a bloke doing his boot up.”

Leeds Rhinos boss raises gamesmanship point

Smith would continue to raise this point noting that the Red Devils used gamesmanship to slow the game down.

He said: “We couldn’t keep the touch because he was doing his boot up. I can’t, you know, don’t hold anything against the bloke doing his boot up. That’s gamesmanship at its finest.

“I’m having this conversation whether we win or lose, like it’s, we should be talking about a good game of footy, which in the end Paul and I were just having a chat, it was a good game of footy for round one, but it went for an hour and 55 minutes and there wasn’t that many tries in it so it wasn’t that many video refs but that’s me for that. It was a good game when it was going.”