Noble's joy as Crusaders beat Leeds

Brian Noble
12 April 2012

Brian Noble could not hide his delight after steering Crusaders to arguably their finest hour with a glorious 32-26 victory against reigning champions Leeds Rhinos at Headingley Carnegie.

Noble's Wrexham-based outfit outscored the Rhinos by five tries to four and this famous success was no more than they deserved. The Welshmen had already caused a stir by beating Bradford - the club where Noble enjoyed so much success as coach - for the second time this season last weekend.

But the significance of this victory went deeper as it ended a seven-match winning run for Leeds and pushed the Crusaders right into contention for an Engage Super League play-off berth, and Noble said: "We had a good win against Bradford last week after a poor run and we backed our efforts up, which was extremely pleasing. There was a belief about us today and I'm extremely pleased for the players. But we need to kick on from here now."

He added: "I love this stadium because it's a fabulous place to come and play rugby. We instilled the belief in the players and I thought we deserved the win."

Heroes emerged everywhere for the injury-hit Crusaders as second rower Weller Hauraki and centre Vince Mellars both touched down twice and Adam Peek was also on target.

Full-back Clinton Schifcofske did not put a foot wrong at full-back and kept the scoreboard ticking over with six goals.

Noble is making Crusaders a force to be reckoned with after building a squad from scratch at the start of the season following his appointment as coach.

He explained: "We need to know that we can compete on the limited budget and move in the right direction.

"We're encouraging our fans to come along and pretty much every game, bar one or two, we have competed in.

"I'm really delighted with some of the principles we have established."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT