Leeds Rhinos: Rhinos are determined to maintain their focus warns Ferres

Rhinos are safe in the top-three of the Qualifiers – guaranteeing them a return to the elite league next year – with two games still to play.

They visit relegation-threatened Huddersfield Giants on Sunday and complete their campaign five days later with a home fixture against promoted Leigh Centurions.

Avoiding the drop was their first priority, but Ferres said the next target is to finish with a 100 per cent record in the middle-eights.

“We will have exactly the same mindset,” insisted the second-rower, who was man of the match in last Friday’s 32-0 win over Batley Bulldogs.

“We wanted seven wins out of seven games from the competition we are in now.

“We are on for that at the moment, five wins from five

“We haven’t played particularly well, so for us it is a big test this weekend at Huddersfield and we are looking forward to it.”

Sunday will be Leeds’ fourth meeting with Giants this year.

They won at home in First Utility Super League, but suffered successive league and Ladbrokes Challenge Cup defeats at John Smith’s Stadium.

Ferres, who joined Rhinos from Huddersfield last winter, said: “We were very scratchy earlier in the season and we came up against a good Huddersfield side and they turned us over a couple of times.

“It is about us this weekend. We have been working hard and getting the results, but we are certainly due a big performance and hopefully that’s this week.”

Rhinos are on an eight-game winning run and Ferres reckons two more victories would send them into the off-season in buoyant mood.

He stressed: “We finished the regular season in pretty good style.

“We got a couple of good scalps and played some good stuff. We are on a bit of a run now and hopefully that will continue this week.

“Potentially there’s still loads to come from us. We have certainly improved since Chico [James Segeyaro] has come over.

“We have adapted a few styles in our play and defensively we’ve changed a few things.

“We are starting to see the fruits of that in patches and once we get consistent with that I think we’ll be a good team.”

Rhinos were well below their best against part-timers Batley and Ferres admitted they will need to improve this week, but he felt the visitors deserved credit for the way they played.

“Games like that are potential banana skins,” he said.

“For Batley it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to come to Headingley and do a job.

“They certainly came out all guns blazing and fair credit to them, they had a good crack at us. We played well in patches, but we were scratchy in our performance. Luckily we came out on top in the scoreline.”