'Too small, too passive, too slow, no structure, no plan': fans blast Leeds Rhinos after St Helens loss

After a second successive away defeat, 40-10 at St Helens, our panel have taken aim at coach Rohan Smith and his players and are calling for major changes on the pitch and behind the scenes.

GAVIN MILLER

My initial summary of Friday night’s game was as follows: too small, too passive, too slow, no structure, no plan. Rohan Smith out.

However, it turns out I need at least 200 words for the Leeds Rhinos Jury piece so I’ve been asked for some more. Here’s the details.

Too small: these forwards are really small, or at least appear small. Saints were bringing on young substitutes on Friday night who looked like giants in comparison. I got Mickael Goudemand mixed up with Matty Russell pre-game at Totally Wicked. Our young substitute forward looks like a scrum-half.

Too passive: I get that the coach likes to play with this defence where you play what’s in front of you and don’t push up and commit, but if you’re passive against St Helens you’ll lose by 30 points, and Leeds did.

Too slow: there’s really no pace in the team. Outside Ash Handley and Leeds’ man of the match Matty Russell there isn’t any. Saints attacked with speed. Leeds didn’t.

No structure, no plan: it’s so blatantly obvious this team lacks a well thought through game plan and has zero attacking structure. It makes me wonder what those at the top of the club are watching.

Smith out: well, that’s what a sizeable proportion of us Leeds fans were singing on Friday night.

DAVID MUHL

I am by nature an optimistic kind of guy and always look for the positives in everything, but I could see no positives from Friday night’s performance. I said last week I wasn’t expecting a win, but I did expect Leeds to put on a bit of a game and show a bit of effort and passion.

Sadly, neither of these things were anywhere in evidence. A side with the players Leeds have should at least be putting in a performance on a Friday night, but they were truly shocking. Leeds’ old problem of making unforced errors was there for all to see. This has been a problem all year, but nothing seems to be done to rectify it.

Once again, our pack was bullied off the park. I’ve said before we are missing a big forward, but that’s no excuse for the show on Friday. A pack with Mik Oledzki, Sam Lisone, Justin Sangare and Mickael Goudemand should not be walked over with such ease. If I was marking Leeds players out of 10 - other than Handley, who is the only player worth his salary - no one would score over three. Leeds fans are not the most patient of folk, but if this continues I think they will start voting with their feet.

I’ve been one of Rohan Smith’s biggest supporters, but I’m very quickly starting to think he’s out of his depth and it’s time we looked elsewhere. Over to you Gary Hetherington. We have four games coming up that we should on paper win, but as the old saying goes, games are played on grass not paper.

It would be disastrous to me if we lost to Hull or Cas, but the way we are playing at the moment I can’t say I’m confident of winning either. Things really need to improve - and quickly.

BECKY OXLEY

A Rhinos double header against Saints brought us ‘nul points’ for either the men or the women. The women played a very close game and had some brilliant defence.

They now have two weeks before Wembley, where they play Saints again and I’m sure they will be up for the challenge. Barrow are up this weekend in Women’s Super League and I’m sure they will get back to winning ways.

I don’t know what to say about the men this week; I have been left speechless, which doesn’t happen very often. They started off well with Ash Handley scoring a cracking try. From that moment onwards they were on the back foot and we started to get very scrappy and lacklustre.

There was no conviction, we were passing the ball with no idea and our defence was pathetic. We have players on the pitch who don’t look like they want to even play for us and have gone backwards from the clubs they were playing for last season.

I’ve backed them all year and gone against a lot of the supporters calling for Rohan Smith’s head, but we looked dejected and as if they weren’t together as a team, standing apart behind the posts, with no team morale. Almost 50 missed tackles and only 829 metres made in the whole game says a lot.

We completed 16 sets, which is disgusting. This can’t continue; something has to change and quickly. It’s frustrating to watch and if it continues we are going to be getting beaten by teams lower than us in the next few weeks and who knows where we are going to end up?

IAIN SHARP

Throughout history, whenever there is misery, despair or a worse fate awaiting, it

usually involves being sent somewhere. For many years Coventry cornered the

market, but equally the Russian Front and the gulags had their day. After St

Helens last Friday night I can now add a new one to the list: a Leeds away game.

There were some highlights from the performance at St Helens, in particular from my man of the match Jack Sinfield. Ignominiously dropped for the game and sent to Halifax to allow the mis-firing Matt Frawley a continued place in the side, Sinfield’s reputation remains intact from being well away from the club’s latest meltdown.

Finally, given it is school exam time and at great personal risk to myself, I can now leak elements of this year’s GCSE paper in Advanced Loiner Studies. The main exam will be based around the question ‘explain who should get out of my club, using reasoned argument’. Students will be awarded extra marks for using phrases like “I have been watching this club since [insert year]” or “since I was 13 years old and I am now 13 and three-quarters”. Further additional marks will be awarded for outrageous time-scales, such as ‘this is the worst Leeds team I have seen in Super League/the history of the club/during the Anthropocene era/since the dinosaurs packed in”. Happy studying.

TOM GOLDSWORTHY

Friday night was yet another low point in our 2024 season as St Helens well and truly put us to the sword. It was another tough night at the office for Leeds and even when we took the lead we were still quite clearly the second-best team.

One of the only consistent elements of Leeds Rhinos games this season is the stupid errors we commit every match. We made 15 on Friday and it simply is not good enough. We fail to do the basics and the errors just mean we aren't giving ourselves any chance of even competing in a game, let alone winning it. Too many players who played on Friday are stealing a wage and should be nowhere near the first team.

No other Super League club would consistently play someone on the wing who cannot catch a ball, so why do we play Luis Roberts? There is a lack of accountability at the club, especially surrounding performance. It seems like no matter how poorly we play, the players and Rohan Smith get a free ride with no consequence.

The fact players come over smiling after the game and taking pictures with fans shows that they simply do not care about the performance and the result. Rohan Smith didn't even have the bottle to come over to the fans after the game. He needs to go and take some of the dross with him.

I am not looking forward to the Castleford game on Saturday. They are always fired up for this fixture and, with us in a slump, I cannot see us winning. Headingley could become quite toxic if we do not start well and get on the front foot and I am sure that fans will be making their thoughts known on Rohan Smith’s future early on. I am hoping to be proved wrong, but my faith in this team has well and truly died out.