Confidence on rise, says Leeds Rhinos' Joel Moon

Rhinos are on a five-game losing run in Betfred Super League, but, without 12 senior players, they were within five minutes of beating runaway leaders St Helens last week and Moon reckons they have set a standard they need to maintain.

“We played well,” he said. “I think we’ll get a lot of confidence out of it and hopefully we can keep going forward.”

Rhinos led twice and also equalised on two occasions after Saints had gone in front.

A try nine minutes from the end opened a six-point advantage, but it was unconverted and Saints hit back almost immediately before sealing Rhinos’ fourth one-point defeat of the season with a drop goal in the final moments.

“We haven’t played like that all year,” admitted Moon. “If we keep that up we’ll be all right. We just need to build on that and work on that game plan and stuff like that.

“We will take a lot of things out of it, but it is disappointing we lost.”

With most pundits predicting a comfortable Saints win, Rhinos had little to lose and Moon feels they need to play with similar freedom when the pressure is on tomorrow.

“We had a good talk during the week and that’s what we wanted to do,” he said. “We played well, but we have to do it again.”

Rhinos remain seventh in the table, but Huddersfield Giants’ one-point win over Catalans on Friday means they are now level on points with Leeds.

Catalans are three adrift and a Rhinos win tomorrow would be a significant step towards securing a top-eight place when the competition splits after 23 rounds.

However, if Catalans claim the spoils they will be just one point behind with five games remaining.

“They are all massive,” Moon said of the remaining regular-season fixtures. “We need the points.”

Moon made his comeback against Saints after missing three games due to an Achilles problem.

“It was just a niggling little injury, but I wanted to get back out there,” he said. “I feel good for the minutes.”

Leeds will be without 10 senior players tomorrow, including England man Ryan Hall, but Ashton Golding, Jordan Lilley and Mikolaj Oledzki could all return from injury.

Oledzki and fellow teenagers Harry Newman, Tom Holroyd and Cameron Smith could all feature against Catalans, and Moon insisted: “That’s exciting. “They are putting pressure on the older guys. That’s healthy, it is good for the team.

Moon is in the final year of his contract and has been linked with a return to Australia’s NRL. He said there have been no developments on a new deal at Leeds, but confirmed he has opened contract talks with the club.