Leeds Rhinos coach Lois Forsell 'frustrated' after women's Challenge Cup semi-final loss to St Helens

Trailing 24-0 with a quarter of the Betfred Women’s Challenge Cup tie remaining, Rhinos staged a spirited fightback before Saints booked their place a sixth successive final - and fourth at Wembley - with a 30-14 win. Forsell admitted Leeds’ poor start left them with too much to do.

“There were too many early errors, in the first 20-30 minutes and a lack of sticking to what we wanted to do,” she reflected. “You can’t turn over the ball as much as we did and make errors at the time in the game and place on the field we did.”

Forsell said the three-try rally “makes it more frustrating, because it shows what you can do and if you do that in the first half, you blow them off the park”. She insisted: “It’s pleasing you can see there’s that character, but frustrating - why do they leave it until then to have that?”

Leeds appeared to have pulled a try back when Saints led 6-0 in the second quarter, but Liv Whitehead’s touchdown was disallowed by video official Liam Rush who overturned Ryan Cox’s on-field call. Forsell said: “I’m not going to comment on much of what the referee did.

“There were probably a few different bits we could talk around, decisions that might have been important in the game, but it’s not going to change it now.

“I thought we defended our goal line quite well at times, but there were little blips - Faye Gaskin’s try shouldn’t be happening. That was poor defence and there’s got to be some individual responsibility why that happened. Overall, it’s just frustrating. We showed glimpses of what we can do, but we were too inconsistent.”