Brad Arthur hails Leeds Rhinos ‘fight’ amid pressure admission

Leeds Rhinos boss Brad Arthur hailed the character and fight his side showed to claim victory over Leigh Leopards. The Rhinos came from behind at Leigh Sports Village to claim a 22-14 win over Adrian Lam’s side who had won their previous four games leading into the clash.

The Rhinos found themselves eight points down in the opening quarter of the game as Umyla Hanley and Keanan Brand took advantage of some poor left edge defence to touch down. Leeds dug deep and fought back though, with Lachie Miller and Sam Lisone getting over to give them a lead at the interval.

James Bentley got Leeds’ first of the second half and although Brand added another to set up what could have been a grandstand finish, Brodie Croft scored the final try of the game to see Leeds bounce back to winning ways after their defeat to Wakefield Trinity last time out.

Arthur admits his side were under pressure to get the two points against the Leopards and he was thrilled to see them handle that and do enough on the night.

Brad Arthur on Leeds Rhinos’ win over Leigh Leopards

“It was Ash Handley’s 250th tonight and we talked about how this team has got a lot of character and a lot of fight and we won that game tonight as a reflection of Ash,” Arthur told Sky Sports.

“He’s a man of good character and he fights hard and we wanted to repay him tonight. Our attacking discipline was better at times. I think we had five or six red zone errors but to our credit we kept fighting hard.

“That will hold us in good stead for some big games. It was a big game tonight, the pressure was on us and we really needed to win that. That will hold us in good stead, there’s quite a lot of learnings out of it but I’m really enjoying the buy in from the group. Nothing is good enough for them at the minute which is great.”

Asked what the performance said about his side, Arthur added: “It says we need to be more consistent. All our games we’ve shown that character and fight and our losing margins haven’t been by much at all. We need to learn how to close them out and that was a step in the right direction tonight.”