Agar hails “tremendous exhibition of attacking rugby” in demolition of Castleford

It was perhaps one of the weirdest results in Super League this year as Leeds thrashed Castleford 60-6 on the Tigers’ own patch.

And, unsurprisingly, Leeds head coach Richard Agar was overjoyed with the result  – even if he was disappointed with the start.

“We played some great stuff; it was clearly not the start we wanted, but I thought we were pretty good defensively after that to keep them to the one try,” Agar said.

“We didn’t let it rattle us and we were pretty positive in how we came back from it – we came back quickly and ruthlessly.

“What we played in the first-half was a tremendous exhibition of attacking rugby.”

Agar believed such a win had been coming.

“It will be good for us, whilst we haven’t been getting the wins, we feel like we have been competing.

“We have had a lot of instability and we played a team that has had that too.

“Tonight will do us good to get that feeling of what our style and brand of rugby feels like and have the confidence in that.

“We’ve shown little bits this year, but we haven’t flowed through it set after set like we did tonight.”

The Leeds boss couldn’t single out just one player for praise in amongst an almost-perfect performance.

“They’ve got a lot of players out of the team at the moment, but our response to a performance last week where we had a lot of ball and didn’t do enough with it and take the opportunities, was great.

“The result certainly wasn’t what we expected before the game, but to applaud the players, we kept going after them.

“We scored tries in a number of ways and that was the pleasing thing, we have got the ability to score differently each time.

“It’s very difficult to single players out, as I don’t think we had a bad player on the field tonight.”

There was one concern for Leeds though as Alex Mellor had bleeding problems throughout the game after changing shirt at least three times.

“Alex couldn’t stop his nose bleeding; the game got a little bit disrupted in the second-half and it flattened off so we brought Alex off.

“I’ve said it every week that I’m not coaching a team that is worrying about where its next win will come from.

“Other sides would have not been able to cope as much as we have.”