Leeds Rhinos Under-19s Women’s Academy suffered a tight 14-8 defeat at the hands of Huddersfield Giants Under-19s as Ellis Pascall’s side lost their second game of the 2025 season.

The home side opened the scoring inside the first ten minutes through Tegan Sant. Both sides had spent most of the early exchanges trying to find their rhythm in attack, but a knock on by Leeds winger Rachel Atkinson from a fifth tackle kick invited the Giants to attack the Rhinos try line. After Martha Hodgson had been brought down short of the line, Sant darted out of dummy half and beat Honey Smith and Imogen Hallas to the try line.

Hodgson wasn’t to be denied a try as Huddersfield recorded back-to-back tries to edge out to an eight-point lead. The Rhinos found themselves under the pressure of the Giants attack after conceding a goal line drop out, Sant timed her pass well to put Hodgson clean through to touch down. Both conversion attempts were missed to make the score 8-0 after 15 minutes.

A shell-shocked Leeds side needed a spark to get their game going, and a break from Honey Smith from a scrum looked to do just that only for them to turn the ball over on the last tackle. Smith came up short of the try line minutes later, as well as Sienna Sharp who reacted quickest to a kick from Phoebe Wilson but the Giants scrambled to hold the centre up over the try line.

Chances continued to present themselves to Pascall’s side all the way up to the break. Hallas had the best scoring chance of all as a kick from Wilson bounced over the head of Giants back Ebony Nicholson and looked like a certain score for Hallas, but she was unable to take the ball in, taking the Rhinos into the break 8-0 down.

A low-scoring second half started strongly as Hallas was quick to add to her impressive try scoring tally in 2025. The visitors had started the second half the livelier of the two sides and got their rewards as Hallas saw a gap on the edge and forced her way over to bring Leeds back within four points on the scoreboard.

Tyson responded for the Giants as Leeds couldn’t contain a charge from Leila Harrap and hooker Abigail Liu utilised a broken Rhinos defence to feed Tyson through. Nevertheless, the Rhinos kept fighting and Lily Thompson got the rewards as wasn’t going to be stopped going for the try line out of dummy half.

With the score at 14-8, both sides pushed each other to the very end, but time ran out on the Rhinos as they lost out for only the second time this season.