LEEDS coach Brian McDermott insisted his victorious team were "terrible" but Hull boss Lee Radford was proud of his players despite losing 38-26 to the Rhinos.

The odds were stacked against Hull as they returned to Super League action just five days after successfully defending the Challenge Cup at Wembley.

Radford's men suffered a major blip after their landmark victory over Warrington in 2016, losing four of their last five Super 8s fixtures to miss out on both the League Leaders' Shield and the Grand Final.

But after their battling display at Headingley, Radford is confident history will not be repeated and said: "I've just given them a big rap. To back up on a Thursday what they did on Saturday in terms of effort took me by surprise a little bit.

"I fully anticipated that we would blow out towards the latter stages and I would have accepted that – but they didn't and that's a real credit to the team.

"It showed that we're not here to fall away this year, we're going to be bang at it.

"If I had one criticism, it was that we hit the chase-the-game button a little early when there was 25 minutes to go. We were kicking short and chipping over."

Radford criticised the fixture planners for forcing his team to play just five days after the cup final.

He said: "The common-sense decision would have been to put it back to Saturday or Sunday. The RFL will blame Sky because they do the scheduling but you want to see a good game of footy.

"It ended up being a good game of footy but it could quite easily not have been."

Radford bit his lip over the decision of referee James Child to sin-bin Hull captain Gareth Ellis for a dangerous tackle on Leeds forward Stevie Ward.

Hull had twice hit back to draw level and it was 12-12 when Ellis was yellow-carded but they conceded a try to Liam Sutcliffe while down to 12 men.

"If I said something it would cost me a lot of money, so I will bite my lip and smile graciously," he said.

Leeds' 12th successive home win over Hull ensured a top-four finish and, five points clear of third-placed Hull with three rounds left of the Super 8s, almost certainly a home semi-final.

Yet McDermott was unhappy with their performance and said: "I'm not pleased at all. I thought it was awful.

"We were distracted, too easily put off our game. Hull were very disruptive – and I don't blame them four days after Wembley – but I thought we were terrible.

"We had some dopey moments and were achingly slow defensively but we won and we can give ourselves a shake and a dress-down, then get ready for a far better performance next week.

"It's good that we've won that game. It doesn't guarantee us second spot but it gets us extremely close."

Leeds had suffered a blow before kick-off when influential stand-off Joel Moon pulled a groin in the warm-up – but replacement Rob Burrow demonstrated his continuing value to the team with a man-of-the-match display.

McDermott said: "It hurt us. Rob came in and played his game but we were used to playing a certain way. I'm not confident (Moon) will be ready next week either."