Leeds Rhinos 26–12 Manly-Warringah — 2012 World Club Challenge
Headingley, Leeds · Attendance: 21,062
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2012 World Club Challenge: Leeds Rhinos 26–12 Manly-Warringah, at Headingley, Leeds.
Sourcing caveat: Leeds scored more tries than the two individually confirmed for Ryan Hall (the goal-kicking/points arithmetic implies additional Leeds tries), but no further scorer names could be confirmed in sources found — deliberately not guessed. No player-of-the-match award identified. No try minutes found beyond the general "midway through the first half" description of Hall's intercept.
Scorers
| Leeds Rhinos | Tries: Hall (2), including a 90-metre first-half intercept Goals: Sinfield (3/5 conversions) |
| Manly-Warringah | Tries: Cherry-Evans; Stewart Goals: Lyon (2/2 conversions) |
Teams
| Leeds Rhinos | Manly-Warringah | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brent Webb | Fullback | Brett Stewart | 1 |
| 2 | Ben Jones-Bishop | Wing | David Williams | 2 |
| 3 | Kallum Watkins | Centre | Jamie Lyon | 3 |
| 4 | Zak Hardaker | Centre | Steve Matai | 4 |
| 5 | Ryan Hall | Wing | Michael Oldfield | 5 |
| 6 | Danny McGuire | Five-eighth | Kieran Foran | 6 |
| 7 | Rob Burrow | Halfback | Daly Cherry-Evans | 7 |
| 8 | Kylie Leuluai | Front row | Jason King | 8 |
| 9 | Paul McShane | Hooker | Matt Ballin | 9 |
| 10 | Jamie Peacock | Front row | Brent Kite | 10 |
| 11 | Jamie Jones-Buchanan | Second row | Anthony Watmough | 11 |
| 12 | Carl Ablett | Second row | Tony Williams | 12 |
| 13 | Kevin Sinfield | Lock (c) | Glenn Stewart | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| 14 | Brett Delaney | Jamie Buhrer | 14 | |
| 16 | Ryan Bailey | Vic Mauro | 15 | |
| 18 | Chris Clarkson | Darcy Lussick | 16 | |
| 20 | Darrell Griffin | George Rose | 17 | |
| Brian McDermott | Coach | Geoff Toovey | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Ashley Klein |
Match report
Leeds avenged their 2009 World Club Challenge defeat to Manly in front of a full Headingley crowd. The game turned midway through the first half when Ryan Hall read a Brett Stewart pass and ran 90 metres to score an intercept try, giving Leeds a 10-0 lead and setting the tone. Leeds led 16-6 at half-time and Hall added a second try to extend the advantage. Manly rallied through tries from Daly Cherry-Evans and Brett Stewart, with Jamie Lyon converting both, but could not close the gap. Kevin Sinfield's boot supplemented Leeds' try-scoring, and the Rhinos closed out a 26-12 win widely framed as redemption for their loss to the same opponents three years earlier.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 Leeds Rhinos' 3rd World Club Challenge title and the 20th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.