Leeds Rhinos boss credits 'physicality', reveals injury blow, blames costly lapses for loss at St Helens
Coach Brad Arthur felt Leeds Rhinos were on a par with St Helens for much of Friday’s 22-14 defeat, but admitted inability to play for the full game wrecked their Wembley hopes.
Saints held a four point advantage midway through the Betfred Challenge Cup fourth round tie, but three tries in eight minutes soon after the break left Leeds with too much to do. It was Rhinos’ second successive Cup loss to Saints and they haven’t reached the quarter-finals since winning the trophy five years ago.
Arthur admitted it was a disappointing night, but identified some encouraging signs. He said: “I thought for 65 minutes, we were really good. In the first half we started to get some good ascendancy, both teams were going at it physically and it was a real grind.
“There was just a two-minute lapse of concentration - there was a penalty and then they scored a try off a kick and probably got a bit lucky with that. We were happy to come in at 6-2 at half-time, but in the second half we gave a penalty away with the ball and turned it over on tackle two, so a couple of individual lapses there.
“On the back of those, there were a couple of individual lapses in defence and it was a 10-minute window that hurt us. It felt like we tried hard - good effort, good physicality and we stayed in the fight, but we’ve got to learn to do that for 80 minutes.”
Leeds paid the price for some costly errors and the coach insisted: “It’s not a team thing, it’s an individual thing. We didn’t make a lot early, then we made them at the wrong times. It’s people trying too hard; they need to be content to do their bit and do their job and let other blokes do their job.”
One positive was full-back Lachie Miller’s return from injury for his first rugby since last September, with Jake Connor moving to scrum-half in place of concussion victim Matt Frawley. However, Rhinos’ record of picking up an injury in every game this season continued when hooker Andy Ackers hobbled off on the stroke of half-time and he could be facing a lengthy layoff.
“He has done his hamstring,” Arthur confirmed. “I don’t know how bad, he’ll have to have some scans.” With Ackers unable to continue, substitute Jack Sinfield came on at acting-half and Miller stayed on the field for the entire game.
Arthur said: “To be honest, Lachie has done one session with the team - that was on Wednesday. He has done other sessions, but not with the team. We hadn’t planned on playing him 80; when we lost Ackers he said he was going all right so we had to leave him on, but he probably wasn’t ready to play the full-80.”
Jarrod O’Connor, Rhinos’ back-up hooker, was 18th man and explaining that, the team boss said: “It was to make sure we had cover for Lachie. Sinny can cover in the halves - the plan was to bring him on in the halves and move Jake to full-back and take Lachie off.”