LEEDS coach Brian McDermott was happy to win ugly as the Rhinos climbed to second place in the Betfred Super League table with a 28-12 triumph over Huddersfield at the John Smith's Stadium.

McDermott's men outscored their hosts by five tries to two to make it five wins from their opening seven matches.

That is in stark contrast to their miserable fortunes throughout 2016 – yet McDermott is not getting carried away by his side's transformation as they prepare to take on defending champions Wigan.

The Rhinos boss said: "We'll savour that. It's a decent position to be in but I don't think we're rolling our shoulders at being there after the last 18 months. We've a big one at our place next Friday against Wigan."

Leeds, who had lost their previous three matches against the Giants, led 18-12 at half-time thanks to tries from wingmen Ryan Hall and Tom Briscoe, second-rower Carl Ablett and hooker Matt Parcell.

The game then became scrappy in the second half and the Rhinos had to wait until the final minute before adding a fifth try through forward Jordan Baldwinson.

McDermott said: "It was an ugly game for both teams. I don't think anybody enjoyed it. I won't be too down about it, though.

"We got penalised a lot in the first half and that takes so much juice out of you. I don't think we got any rhythm or momentum back and the game became a scrappy, stop-start affair.

"They probably let us off the hook with their finishing but I suppose we were just good enough defensively to come away with the win

"We weren't as good with the ball as the previous week but it's good that we can defend our way to a win."

Leeds lost centre Jimmy Keinhorst with a knee injury, while full back Ashton Golding went off towards the end with concussion.

Huddersfield led 12-10 at one stage after scoring tries through second-rower Ukuma Ta'ai and winger Jermaine McGillvary.

They then lost the influential Danny Brough to the sin-bin early in the second half after he came to blows with Ablett, who was also red-carded, and never managed to find the same fluency again.

"It's a disappointment," said Giants coach Rick Stone, whose side have now gone four matches without a win.

"We were in the contest for the majority of the game. We started a little bit slow but we got on even terms.

"The Danny Brough sin-bin didn't help our cause. I thought there were some tries there if we could hang on to the ball but we made ten second-half errors, which makes it tough to win matches. We didn't give ourselves a chance.

"In the last 20 minutes we defended our line really strongly and Leeds gave us some respect by kicking a couple of penalty goals. They managed the game better than us at the crucial times."