Women's RL: The hard work's just begun for Leeds Rhinos, insists captain Forsell

Rhinos, coached by Adam Cuthbertson, won 32-16 at Bradford Bulls in their first competitive game yesterday, which was also their debut in the expanded Women’s Super League.

Forsell scored a brace of tries against her former club, Suze Hill, Amy Johnson and Charlotte Booth also crossed and Rhiannon Marshall booted four goals.

“It was a great result and one we will take confidence from,” Forsell said.

“We’re happy to get the season underway like that and it was a great day, everyone’s on a real high now.

“We’ve set out what we are here to do. There was a lot of pressure on us, people saying you can’t build things overnight, but we’ve worked really hard for three months and the whole process started last summer.”

The winter’s bad weather hampered Rhinos’ preparations and they were beaten at Castleford Tigers in their only pre-season game. They have a bye this weekend and then travel to Wigan Warriors – who crushed Featherstone Rovers 54-0 in their first game – in round two.

“We’ve got some tough games, but that’s good,” Forsell added. “It keeps everyone hungry, that’s why [Sunday] was so good.

“Everyone’s focused on being the best player they can be and we know we’ve got to keep turning up and improving. There’s loads of work still to do, we made a great start, but we need to be better each week.

“We missed some opportunities and there’s certain things we can do to manage the game better. We will come up against different challenges and we need to be able to make sure we adapt to different situations.

“We are not going to get ahead of ourselves, it’s the first job out of the way and every week we’ve got to refocus and make sure we are the best we can be.”

The match at Odsal was played as part of a double-header with Bulls’ Betfred League One game against Coventry Bears.

Wakefield Trinity opened their campaign with a 40-10 victory over Hull.