Rohan Smith doesn’t hold back as he explains defeat to Leigh

Last night Leeds Rhinos were well beaten by the Leigh Leopards.

Leeds have been winning games in spite of slow starts and they would have to do so again tonight as they fell 6-0 down early to an Edwin Ipape try as he chased a lovely grubber kick towards the posts to touch down.

By the 10 minute mark the Leopards led 10-0 as Kai O’Donnell scored from close range as set restarts were killing the Rhinos.

Leigh should have led 16-0 when Josh Charnley broke and looked to find Lachlan Lam but a last moment intervention from Richie Myler denied them.

The Leopards didn’t have to wait to extend their lead however with Ipape powering over from dummy half.

Leeds were lucky to not be further behind as ill-discipline and errors invited more pressure.

They did give themselves hope at the break as James Bentley hit a good line to cross and make it 16-6 on the stroke of halftime.

In the second half, Leeds asked some early questions but for the first 20 minutes the Leopards held on.

Then they were awarded a penalty and Ben Reynolds took the chance to make it 18-6.

Leeds thought they might have had a try back when a Rhyse Martin offload found James Bentley but the pass was deemed forward.

Late on, Leigh were given a chance to seal the win with another penalty from Ben Reynolds and he nailed it to make it 20-6.

After the game Leeds boss Rohan Smith said on the Rhinos’ YouTube channel that he would spend time over the next couple of weeks looking to address Leeds’ slow starts to games.

“I am going to spend the next couple of weeks trying to find the solutions.

“Leigh executed some plays really well, so they need credit for that, but they were plays that we had prepared for.”

He was not at all impressed with his side’s defence or their attack for that matter.

“We were pretty ordinary in defence. We were disjointed and chased the scoreboard way too early and we made errors on the back of that.

“In the second-half we were winning the energy battle, but there was no just execution.

“We just lacked execution and that was critical.”