Leeds Rhinos boss backs Harry Newman, praises rookie half, says injuries no excuse for loss v Leigh Leopards

Leeds had nine players on their casualty list, including five of their first 13, but Arthur denied that was why they lost. “You can’t use it as an excuse,” he insisted. “Everyone gets injuries and we were confident, coming here, we had a good enough team.

“We just got a couple of bits of detail wrong - you can’t concede two tries from not cleaning up the ball, not against really good teams, not at this level.”

Arthur admitted Rhinos “weren’t at our best with some of our execution”, but stressed: “I was really happy with our effort, our fight. We had some good periods of physicality, but [Leigh scored] two scrappy tries from kicks in the second half and we gave away some red zone penalties that we’ll have to have a look at.

“We gave them a leg up and at times we were a bit disjointed with the ball. There’s a couple of different reasons around that, but when it got to 26-8 we kept fighting and showing good levels of physicality and energy and we didn’t give up.”

George Brown, who turns 19 next week, made his Betfred Super League debut at scrum-half, in place of the injured Jake Connor. That came just six days after his first appearance in the senior side, at full-back in Leeds’ Challenge Cup win at Widnes Vikings.

“It’s great for him and he did a really good job defensively,” Arthur said. “In the first half we had some opportunities on our left side. They were sending all their troops to mark our right side and we had some opportunities where he probably needed to step up and get the ball. Also, we probably as a team need to trust him a little bit more, but that’s what happens when you’ve got a young bloke in there. Everyone tries to help him out and do a little bit too much.

“We trusted him more in the second half and he’s only going to get better from it. It’s good experience you can’t give him at training. He made some really strong tackles. He’s a tough kid, a brave kid. It’s hard in round one to come here on the back of just two training sessions in the halves and it’s the first time he has done a lot with Lachie [Miller, Rhinos’ full-back].”

A second half skirmish ended with Rhinos’ Harry Newman being sin-binned along with Matt Davis of Leigh, whose side received the subsequent penalty. Arthur said: “I don’t know what it was for, but obviously the ref thought it was warranted for both of them to be off.

“I’m not sure it was an actual high tackle, I thought the three tackles we made on the tryline were really good, good line speed and I couldn’t see any high collisions. I thought the penalty was for a high tackle and maybe the sin-bin was for a bit of push and shove, but I am not sure, I didn’t ask him.”

Newman was also involved in a feisty head to head with Leigh centre Tesi Niu, including an incident in the first half when Leeds were penalised. “To be fair to Harry, he got up at marker and he got pushed first,” Arthur said of that incident. “The penalty should probably have gone to us, they pushed Harry - not the other way around. He just stood his ground and outside of that, I don’t think he did anything else. He just was aggressive down on the tryline, but I need to look at the video a bit closer to make sure I am right.”