“Let them off the hook” – Brad Arthur rues wasteful Leeds Rhinos after Hull KR defeat

Leeds Rhinos’ new head coach Brad Arthur has claimed that his side let opponents Hull KR “off the hook” as he assessed the club’s 20-12 defeat from Saturday.

A Rhyse Martin try was the only score of the first half before the Robins hit back through Ryan Hall and Mikey Lewis to take the lead. A bizarre Lachlan Miller try put Leeds Rhinos in front with just under ten minutes to go but KR scored two more of their own to wrap up the win.

It’s a loss that puts Leeds Rhinos’ playoff hopes in serious jeopardy and that was one of the first things that Arthur was asked about in his post-match press conference, whether he’d seen enough so suggest the club could make the top six

“Yeah, well, that’s nine weeks away,” Arthur explained to the media.

“That’s got to be the end result of what we’re chasing. But what we need to do is the stuff that we did really well today, we’ve got to improve on that next week and make sure we maintain that.”

Continuing to assess the performance, Arthur stated: “I thought that with the kick chase, we’ve done a good job keeping them coming out of red zone. They didn’t just march down the field and they had to work their way and kick their way out of trouble. They got a couple of 40-20s so we’ve got to tidy up that.

“If we continue to do that well and then just own some of the detail, like a couple of times when we didn’t have a dummy half to pick up the ball, or we just lost a little bit of concentration.”

He quickly moved onto what the club need to be better at though as he also argued that it was a win that they let slip from their grasp.

Should Leeds Rhinos have beaten Hull KR?

Conceding two tries so late on is certainly something to be worked on but Arthur was more concerned with the points left on the field earlier on. Leeds Rhinos completed at 84%, however, they were still wasteful at times, something the Australian was left to rue.

He explained: “We were in the fight for some set-for-set footy and we forced them into a couple of errors and penalties but then tackle one, we throw the ball in the touch. Another time on tackle two, we run in the touch. We were building a bit of pressure but when we learn to stay in it in those times and get that detail right, we’ll be better for it.”

Arthur had previously explained his philosophy as being incredibly effort-based with the licence to play at the right time but he accepted that whilst the balance was “okay”, there were examples of wastefulness which led to the defeat.

“We created some opportunities that we didn’t quite nail and then I thought at times when we got tired that we were going a bit one out. That’s going to take a bit of time (to fix) but we did build a bit of pressure and then we let them off the hook with some early errors in the count.

“I thought the balance was okay. We’re going to get better and better at it but we’re up 12-10 with six minutes to go. We put ourselves in a position to win and that’s what we need to do.”

They’ll have the opportunity to do so next week against Huddersfield Giants who have themselves recently parted ways with their head coach.