Leeds Rhinos’ Brad Arthur laments team’s ‘embarrassing’ attitude in loss to St Helens | Rugby League News

Leeds head coach Brad Arthur was heavily critical of his team’s attitude and branded their first-half performance “embarrassing” as they to an 18-4 loss to St Helens.

Rhinos went into the contest on a five-game winning run in the Super League, including victory over Saints on Magic Weekend, but were limited to only one try as the hosts produced big moments at both ends of the field.

Meanwhile, Leeds copped a whole host of handling errors, chances coming but quickly going as they could not consistently put plays together.

Asked if he had read the riot act at half-time, Arthur said: “It wasn’t a ‘spray’ because I don’t know if that was going to make much difference.

“We just talked about how it was probably our worst 40 minutes, it was embarrassing, and we had 40 minutes to just chase a performance not the scoreboard, and unfortunately we continued to chase the scoreboard.

“I think it comes back to one thing and that’s attitude. I think they had a better attitude to try and get the simple things right and build a game. We probably wanted to get a quick win and get it over and done with.

“We might think we’re going better than we are. What I’ve tried to drill into the boys is every team’s coming after you now. The only thing that matters right now is how we respond to it.”

There were a notable number of handling errors on a sweaty night, but Arthur added of the heat: “It’s a choice, you can choose whether you want to make it an effect or not and obviously we did.”

Wilkin: Leeds approached the game with arrogance

Sky Sports Rugby League’s Jon Wilkin was also not impressed with Leeds Rhinos approach to the contest and believes they turned up with an “arrogance” after winning their last five games.

“I thought it was an arrogant and overconfident performance from Leeds,” he said.

“I thought they approached the game with arrogance from minute one, disrespecting position and gifting Saints possession too easily.

“Brad Arthur will be fuming at that. It’s all attitude that. You need to give every fixture in this league the credit it deserves, and I just don’t think Leeds turned up in the mental space to play a tight game.”

It was a different story for winning head coach Paul Wellens though, who believes his side have found the “blueprint” to get the big wins like this that have been eluding them.

“This was a really important game for us,” said head coach Wellens. “I thought the way the team approached it was first class. We’ve come off the back of a short turnaround at Salford, and that was a physical game.

“We’ve done next to nothing on the training field but the players have got themselves in a position to go out there and perform like that against a really good side. To keep them to only four points on a night like this I think was a huge defensive effort.

“The challenge for us now is to build on that and build some consistency. That’s been one of our issues in recent times. That’s a blueprint for us in how to play in big games.”

“(Harry Robertson’s tackle) was the play of the night for me,” added Wellens. “I was confident coming into tonight that we’d get a good strong performance and, when I saw that, that reassured me even more than we’re here to play.”

Sky Sports will again show every game of Super League live this season – including two matches in each round exclusively live, with the remaining four matches each week shown on Sky Sports+ via the red button.