Willie Poching reveals “rude” encounter that motivated Leeds Rhinos stars

One of the biggest results of the season so far came a week and a half ago when St Helens were stunned in their homecoming against Leeds Rhinos with a Blake Austin drop goal defeat the newly crowned World Champions.

A big win for the Rhinos and someone who knows all about those is former Rhino Willie Poching.

It seems he can take some credit for the win as well after he accidentally motivated two of Leeds’ try scorers against St Helens going into the game.

He said on the Rhinos YouTube channel:

“To go to St Helens on such a big night for that club to celebrate what they did at Penrith, which was a fantastic feat for our game let alone the club.

“I’ve got to say a little story and I feel a bit rude that it happened and now that they were right, but I bumped into Cameron Smith and Rhyse Martin the weekend before.

“It was the night after they’d lost to Hull here and I said ‘who have you got next week’, and Rhyse said ‘St Helens’.

“I must have put on the look of ‘oh have you?’, so Rhyse rightly so said to me ‘what’s that look all about?’, and if they got some motivation from that then great on them for going and getting that result that they did.

“Especially when two weeks prior the performance against Warrington was so much lower, to turn it around so quickly in two weeks is really impressive from the boys and Rohan.”