Saints wary of Leeds

Saints wary of Leeds

By Paul Sculthorpe St Helens and Lions star

The four best teams in the country are left in the Challenge Cup after an exciting weekend of rugby league.

I heard on Tuesday evening that St Helens had drawn Leeds in the semi-finals. It will be a massive game - a classic War of the Roses clash.

With the quality of the team's left in the competition, we were never going to get an easy match - we're just delighted to be involved.

The Lancashire versus Yorkshire nature of the tie just adds that extra spice.

A few so-called experts have been saying that Leeds are the weakest team left in the competition, but the Rhinos are the only team who haven't lost yet this season.

Challenge Cup semi-final draw

Leeds are buzzing at the moment and look like they have the best team-spirit they've had for years.

So make no mistake - this will be a tough game. Leeds will be even more fired up for the game after losing to Saints at the semi-final stage for the past two seasons.

But we will be aiming to make it third-time unlucky for the Rhinos.

Salford gave us a bit of a scare in the quarter-final and we found it really hard to break them down in the first half.

We struggled to impose ourselves at first and Salford deserve full credit for stopping us from playing. But it was a different story after the break.

We put a few set-pieces together and quickly went ahead. Once we get on a roll we are tough to stop and it was one-way traffic in the second half.

The game was particularly special for me because I scored my 100th career try - and my 101st.

I've been waiting for my career ton since scoring against Bradford on the opening day of the Super League season, and I'm thrilled to have achieved the feat.