Sky Bet's Jordan Fiddes previews round five of Super League and where to put your money.
Sky Bet's Jordan Fiddes previews this weekend's round five of Super League
We've got a repeat of four of the last six Grand Finals on Friday night as Leeds Rhinos travel to St Helens in an attempt to avenge last week's World Club Challenge defeat to Melbourne Storm.
Not only that, but they will be desperate to overturn the form book and claim their first win over the Saints away from home since March 2008; not including those four Grand Final wins of course.
While the Rhinos were slugging it out against the, now, best club team in the World, St Helens comfortably beat Bradford Bulls at Odsal.
In fact they had all but claimed the two league points after just 20 minutes as they raced into a 16-0 lead.
Whether that has a bearing on this Friday's result remains to be seen but Sky Bet have given Leeds a 6 point head start in the
handicap market.
Leeds may be buoyed by the fact that, after last year's World Club Challenge, they went on a four-match winning run, but the team which brought that all to a halt was none other than St.Helens.
Not only did the Saints win that game last year, they won in style.
In aid of Sport Relief, the Rhinos had dyed red hair for their first game at Langtree Park, but they left with red faces too as the scoreline read 46-6 to the home team.
I get the feeling that things will be different this year, Leeds coach Brian McDermott has already said that: "St Helens have done a job on us in our last four meetings and, for the last two seasons, we have not performed well against them."
Expect Leeds to come out firing and for that reason my first bet is for Ryan Hall to score the first try at
15/2.
The Saints have already conceded a try against the opposition's left winger in both their home games this year (Tom Briscoe of Hull and Luke George for the Giants) and the Rhinos are heavily lop sided in Hall's favour.
With Zak Hardaker injured, right centre Kallum Watkins moves to full-back, and right-winger Ben Jones-Bishop is still side-lined through injury.
Therefore, Leeds will be pushing the ball wide to Hall at every opportunity and an each-way 1st try for him looks pretty good.
Salford on the Rise
In Friday's other game, I'm going for Salford on the handicap at
-6 at home to London Broncos.
Ok, they may have only won their first game against Hull KR last week but I expect that to be a turning point for the City Reds.
They may not have Sam Tomkins yet but NRL reinforcements in Liam Foran and Vic Mauro are named in the squad for this fixture.
While they won't be match fit as they awaited visas, they will certainly add some go-forward to the Salford side.
Key to Salford's success last week against the Robins was the performance of Marc Sneyd at half-back and he is third on the table for most try-assists in the competition.
Although much has changed since 2009 for both sides, the capital side have not won away at Salford since then.
With the City Reds at
10/11 to beat the handicap and Ryan Hall
15/2 to score first against St.Helens, you will get a little over
15/1 for the double.
View from the Sky Bet trading room
"Leeds are proving very popular on the
+6 handicap on Friday with many punters expecting a World Club Challenge backlash.
Wigan are also popular at
-12 and they have beaten the handicap twice already this season.
Castleford have proved tough to beat at home in 2013 and a few bets have already come in for the 'Winning Margin' market.
After his try last week, we've seen a bit of money for Danny Williams of Salford to score first.
Williams has scored 19 tries in 23 appearances for the City Reds so there might be some value to be had there.
We've even added a special bet for all the favourites to win this weekend at
11/2 in our 'What If..' market."
