Throughout the off-season, hullfc.com will be looking back at some of the Black & Whites’ best victories during the 2020 season.
Our first featured game was the Airlie Bird’s opening victory of the season, as they began the year in style with a dominant 6-30 win over Leeds Rhinos at Emerald Headingley Stadium.
To watch the match highlights – click here
To watch the full match replay – click here
How the match unfolded….
Although Leeds had the best chances of the opening stages, Hull took the lead in the 15th minute thanks an early penalty from Marc Sneyd.
The Black & Whites opening try of the 2020 season will arguably go down as one of the best of the campaign. Ratu Naulago took a high ball on his own try line, and broke down the right edge past the flailing defence on Konrad Hurrell and Harry Newman. intelligently passing the ball inside to Carlos Tuimavave, the silky centre had the pace to finish and electric move.
With less than 15 minutes remaining in the half, Leeds had one of their strongest chances of the game so far and Liam Sutcliffe went for the corner for the Rhinos, but again – strong edge defence from Hull prevented the try as he was forced into touch.
Hull’s impressed in the first forty and it would get even better before the break. As Hull attacked into the Leeds half, some great vision from Jamie Shaul switched the play to the right side. Finding Jake Connor, the stand-off flew through a gap and fed the ball unselfishly to Ratu Naulago to finish off the move.
The Airlie Birds would go even further ahead just three minutes later. Andre Savelio hit a gap in the Leeds line under the posts and offloaded to Josh Bowden who crashed over for his first try since 2017.
The hosts thought they had their first score of the afternoon just moments before the break. Brad Dwyer darted from dummy-half close to the line, but the video referee deemed him to be short thanks to some resolute defence from Ma’u and Bowden.
Hull earned the first points in the second-half, just as they did in the first thanks to the boot of Marc Sneyd who slotted over a penalty goal from 40 metres out. Sneyd then made it a 20-point gap with a further penalty goal 10 minutes into the half.
Naulago bagged another with 20 minutes left on the clock, receiving a delightful wide ball from Jamie Shaul to dive over with ease in the corner, before Leeds finally got on the score-sheet with less than a quarter of the game remaining with Ash Handley finding space to finish on the left edge.
Jamie Shaul managed to get on the scoresheet in the final minutes of the game to compound a memorable opening round win for the visitors.
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