Leeds Rhinos coach pays credit to Wigan Warriors following semi-final defeat with 'tough lessons' assessment

The Warriors Women will make their first-ever appearance at Wembley on June 7 thanks to a 44-14 win over the Rhinos at the LNER Community Stadium in York on Saturday afternoon.

Wigan were 30-0 ahead at the break, with the game all but over at that point. However, the Rhinos salvaged some pride, scoring three of the last four tries of the game.

“I just think it was a really disappointing first half from us, first and foremost,” said Forsell in her post-match press conference. “We just gave ourselves far too much to do, you can’t turn up to a semi-final the way we did early doors, and the points scored against us are really disappointing if I’m being honest.

“We’ve just got some tough lessons to learn with how we turn the ball around and how we control a game, I think the points they scored either came on the back of a penalty or our errors, so if you take those out of the game, they don’t get the points on the board and we put ourselves in a position like we did in the second half to go and score.

“I think the first half is just massively disappointing. Obviously, the second half we gave ourselves a lot to do, and being hit with injuries, made it really difficult, but our girls fronted up in the second half and they did some things in areas a lot better, but still not consistently enough.

“We lost Bella Sykes to a concussion, Izzy Northrop came off for a head injury assessment, Ruby Walker came off with her ankle, and Connie Boyd came off with her ankle so our bench was obliterated in that second half, and we obviously kept the score a little bit lower than the first half. I think that’s the message to take, our first half performance wasn’t good enough, and we have to find the ability to start faster and harder.”

Forsell paid tribute to Wigan, who welcomed back England international halfback Izzy Rowe from a hamstring injury, whilst key prop Mary Coleman made her 50th appearance for the Warriors.

“I think they obviously performed, having Izzy Rowe back as well was a huge boost for them,” Forsell added.

“I think we knew they were going to be tough and were going to perform well but I think our try flurry towards the back end of the second half shows that, actually, we probably did flatter them a bit at times and we could’ve made it a much tougher job for them, but full credit to Denis (Betts) and his side because they stuck to the game plan a lot better than we did in the first half.”