Last night Rohan Smith’s Leeds Rhinos came up short in a vital game against Hull KR despite tries from Ash Handley, Corey Johnson and Jarrod O’Connor.
The Rhinos never led in the game going 6-0 down to a Brad Schneider try on debut before Jarrod O’Connor’s try was followed by scores from Tom Opacic and Louis Senior.
They did have the better of the second half but didn’t take their chances with the game going to golden point allowing Schneider to win it with the drop goal.
After the game, Smith said: “Any golden point loss is hard to take because you know you’ve gone the distance but not got the job done.
“I thought on a difficult night, conditions wise, we let ourselves down with a couple of those tries early in the game where I didn’t think we were in any trouble defensively but but we had one play poor and that hurt us a couple of times for some points.
“I don’t think they scored in the second half try did they? So it was good positive and the way we were attacking with our defence at the back end we kept creating opportunities for ourselves to win it but clearly we let ourselves down with some possession skills throughout the game.
“In the first half there was probably a couple of overplay errors that hurt us and then the second half was some mess around the play of the ball that hurt us.”
Despite explaining reasons why Leeds came up short on the night, Smith said his side should have won.
When asked if the Rhinos should have emerged victorious, Smith said:
“I think we should have tonight and you know there’s a couple of critical calls which you know I believe there’s a few critical ones last night on TV that will probably get more exposure because this one’s not on TV but the ruck’s been untidy for a good period of time now and continues to make hard calls for the referees.”
Leeds now have a week off due to being out of the Challenge Cup.
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