The surprising stat behind Aidan Sezer’s performance last night as Leeds Rhinos lost to Salford

After five defeats from six games, serious questions are being asked of Leeds Rhinos especially in attack.

Going into last night’s game, they had the second worst attack in the league in terms of points scored with the likes of Toulouse scoring more than them. I doubt the 12 points they managed last night will change much of that.

As consequence, massive questions have been thrown the way of new halfback pairing Aidan Sezer and Blake Austin. The duo were brought in ahead of this year and even prompted Leeds to allow former skipper and Challenge Cup Final hero Luke Gale to leave.

After six games, this gamble is yet to pay off with heavy criticism thrown the way of the duo especially Blake Austin who was described as having “deteriorated” since 2019 by Phil Clarke on Sky Sports. Austin was also taken off during last night’s defeat to Salford.

However, halfback partner Aidan Sezer has also been hit with his fair share of criticism as well and especially last night. It was his attacking kick which was fielded on the full by Joe Burgess who then took a quick 20 metre restart, broke down field creating the field position for Chris Atkin’s decisive try.

That said, he also came up with a few nice touches including a lovely kick to create Leeds’ opening try of the game.

He also came up with a surprising statistic making 102 metres, a surprisingly large total for a halfback especially an organiser like Sezer. Only Ash Handley, Liam Sutcliffe, Cameron Smith, Rhyse Martin, Mikolaj Oledzki and Tom Briscoe made more metres than the number seven meaning he actually made more metres than forwards like Zane Tetevano.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is hard to decipher however. On the face of it, it’s of course a good thing but if your halfback is running so much and therefore getting tackled so much, what is happening in the rest of the attack?

Does this show that Sezer and co haven’t got the options they want on their outside or perhaps it shows that Leeds’ attack is breaking down before it even gets to Sezer.