Leeds Rhinos boss not considering 'personal ramifications' of Huddersfield Giants loss as injury woes mount

Smith is coming under increasing pressure from fans following Friday’s 30-24 loss to Huddersfield Giants at AMT Headingley. It was Rhinos’ fourth successive home defeat and they have a 50 per cent winning record after eight Betfred Super League rounds.

Asked in his post-match press conference if he feels the result could have any “personal ramifications”, Smith stressed: “I have never considered that. The players put a lot of effort in there, they worked hard and did a lot of good stuff.

“We let ourselves down in some moments for sure and part of that was due to people playing out of position and whatnot. Those players and us as a staff are very well-connected and we’re in it together. Over the course of a very long season, we're not in the worst position.

“We'd like to be in a better position, for sure, but it is a tight, hard competition. As a minimum standard, as a good, competitive team, you want to be in every game against good opposition and we are well and truly there.”

Of whether he is confident he can turn things around, Smith said: “I am confident we’ll get a good response next week and we’ll go to Hull and play well. We need to see a response, get back to work and continue to work on our combinations and our execution defensively when we are under pressure, which we are sure to be at some stage in every game. That’ll be for us to work on during the week and be better at next week.”

Smith insisted there is “a lot of belief” in the team, despite recent setbacks. He stated: “They back each other and we're very connected as a group, but we need to play better for longer. We've had too many lapses over the course of the season, too many periods in games where we haven't been good enough.

“We had a couple of lapses - periods of time where we lapsed - today. Overall there were a lot of positive periods as well, but we need more for longer.”

To add to Rhinos’ woes, they lost centre Harry Newman and winger David Fusitu’a - who was playing his first game of the season following knee surgery - early in the second half. Smith said the pair managed to get through the first 40, but he added: “They started the second half, but just weren’t able to go on. Harry had a decent back spasm quite early in the game after getting hit hard in a tackle.

“Fus’ has hurt his other knee, which is really rough for him. He has worked really hard to come back in good shape, but he is probably going to be missing for a little bit.

“There’s talk about a medial injury there and sometimes the minor ones are very painful early in the piece, but they come good very quickly. Sometimes some of the ones that aren’t so painful end up being the longer-term ones, so we’ll have to get that scanned and find out the outcome then.”