Melbourne Storm 18–10 Leeds Rhinos — 2010 World Club Challenge
Elland Road, Leeds · Attendance: 27,697
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2010 World Club Challenge: Melbourne Storm 18–10 Leeds Rhinos, at Elland Road, Leeds.
Sourcing caveat: Exact minutes for the MacDougall and Quinn tries not found. The referee (Richard Silverwood) is only single-sourced. Cameron Smith was originally named player of the match but the award is not shown here since it was effectively voided by Melbourne's later salary-cap sanction.
Scoring timeline
| 48′ | Leeds Rhinos — try, McGuire |
Tries with a sourced minute, in order scored. Tries whose exact minute isn't recorded in available sources appear in the Scorers table below but not here.
Scorers
| Melbourne Storm | Tries: MacDougall; Quinn Goals: Smith (5/5 conversions) |
| Leeds Rhinos | Tries: McGuire 48' Goals: Burrow (2 goals); Sinfield (1 goal) |
Teams
| Melbourne Storm | Leeds Rhinos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Billy Slater | Fullback | Brent Webb | 1 |
| 2 | Luke MacDougall | Wing | Kallum Watkins | 2 |
| 3 | Dane Nielsen | Centre | Brett Delaney | 3 |
| 4 | Greg Inglis | Centre | Keith Senior | 4 |
| 5 | Anthony Quinn | Wing | Ryan Hall | 5 |
| 6 | Brett Finch | Five-eighth | Danny McGuire | 6 |
| 7 | Ryan Hinchcliffe | Halfback | Rob Burrow | 7 |
| 8 | Aiden Tolman | Front row | Kylie Leuluai | 8 |
| 9 | Cameron Smith | Hooker | Matt Diskin | 9 |
| 10 | Jeff Lima | Front row | Jamie Peacock | 10 |
| 11 | Adam Blair | Second row | Jamie Jones-Buchanan | 11 |
| 12 | Ryan Hoffman | Second row | Ian Kirke | 12 |
| 13 | Todd Lowrie | Lock | Kevin Sinfield | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| 14 | Rory Kostjasyn | Danny Buderus | 14 | |
| 15 | Kevin Proctor | Ali Lauiti'iti | 15 | |
| 16 | Hep Cahill | Greg Eastwood | 16 | |
| 17 | Jesse Bromwich | Ryan Bailey | 17 | |
| Craig Bellamy | Coach | Brian McClennan | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Richard Silverwood (single-sourced — not independently cross-confirmed) |
Match report
Played in slippery, rain-soaked conditions, this was a tight arm-wrestle between the reigning NRL and Super League champions. Melbourne fielded a weakened side, missing seven regulars including halfback Cooper Cronk, yet still controlled the kicking game through Cameron Smith, who landed all five conversions. Leeds hit the front through a contentious Danny McGuire try in the 48th minute, awarded by the video referee despite vocal Melbourne protests that McGuire was offside — the score put Leeds narrowly ahead before Melbourne's forwards ground out field position, and Anthony Quinn's late try sealed an 18-10 win, with Luke MacDougall having also crossed earlier. The result was later overshadowed: Melbourne's title was rescinded after the club's 2010 salary-cap scandal broke, and Cameron Smith's original man-of-the-match award (won on the day) was stripped as part of the same fallout, making this one of the most controversial editions in the fixture's history.This match belonged to the modern, annual World Club Challenge era launched in 2000, pitting that season's NRL Premiers directly against the same season's Super League Grand Final winners in a single fixture. The fixture as a whole began as a single unofficial match in 1976 and was repeated only sporadically through the 1980s and early 1990s: it wasn't played at all in 1988, 1990, 1993, or 1995-96, the last of those gaps caused by the Super League War splitting Australian rugby league into two rival competitions. The 1997 attempt to relaunch it as a 22-club, two-conference "World Club Championship" — five Australasian clubs touring Europe and five European clubs touring Australasia simultaneously — reportedly lost more than $5 million and was shelved for three years. It returned in 2000 as the simple one-off match still used today, missing only during the brief 2015-2017 multi-match "World Club Series" expansion (when the marquee fixture still determined the World Club Challenge title, alongside several other NRL-Super League pairings played the same week) and the 2021-2022 Covid-19 cancellations and the 2025 withdrawal by Penrith Panthers. The result here was Melbourne Storm's 2nd World Club Challenge title and the 18th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.