‘Dominated’ – Brad Arthur’s brutal Leeds Rhinos assessment after loss to Wigan Warriors

Leeds Rhinos saw their play-off hopes take a massive dent last night in a 38-0 defeat to Wigan Warriors and Brad Arthur has had his say.

After beating Hull KR in a gritty performance last week, Wigan were back to their brilliant best but the resistance of the Rhinos left little to be desired with Leeds being ‘dominated’ according to Brad Arthur.

They were his thoughts in his post-match presser when asked to assess the game with the Australian explaining: “We were just beaten by a way better side tonight.

“They were better than us physically, they dominated us physically. That was right from the start. And 1-17 across the field, they owned their jobs and we didn’t.”

It’s a vastly different scoreline to the 30-4 win for Leeds at Headingley just over a month ago but personnel was the major difference. Wigan had Bevan French back whereas the Rhinos were without full-back Lachie Miller, leaving them without an X-factor to escape Wigan’s chokehold.

‘Need to make it a one-off’ – What Brad Arthur said after loss

Arthur would further explain how the Rhinos’ lack of physicality led to their demise with Wigan dominating the territory and possession all game long.

He explained: “We didn’t handle their physicality like I said, and we never, through the lack of physicality, we never got any field position all night. In the first half, we never had one set that started down in their half. We got a couple of tackle fours and fives into their half, but that was about it.

“In the second half, it didn’t really improve much. I think we got maybe one set started down inside their half and turned it over early in the tackle count. So yeah physically that we were just on a different level then.”

The Rhinos had just five play the balls in Wigan’s 20 compared to a whopping 35 for Matt Peet’s side in Leeds’ 20. They also completed 13 fewer sets as Arthur argued that the lacklustre performance needs to be a ‘one-off’.

“We need to make sure it’s a one-off. It’s certainly not the way we want to finish our season. I don’t know what next week means for us in terms of the results but what it what it does mean is that we need to be way better than that.”

What next for Leeds Rhinos

In order to make the play-offs Leeds will have to travel Craven Park to take on Hull KR and hope other results go in their favour but the performance last night has seen Arthur already start talking about 2025.

“It just shows you we’ve got a bit of work to do in the pre-season if we want to be physical and match that every week,” he argued.

Two of the positives to take from the loss were the performances of Alfie Edgell and Riley Lumb and whilst Edgell got a name-check, the Australian was quick to highlight team-wide improvements.

“I thought they were OK, they’ve done a good job. Alfie hasn’t played full-back for four or five months, so it was tough on him. I thought they probably kicked us to death a little bit, so that’s an area we need to improve.”

Going forward, he assessed: “We’ve just got to stick to what we normally do during the week. We have to review it, be honest, move on from it and find a way.

“We’ve still got plenty to play for. You tell me that results went our way, but regardless, we’ve got a bit of pride. We’ve played better than that and we don’t want to finish like that.”