Kruise Leeming column: 'We deserve to be confident' says Leeds Rhinos skipper

Last week at Catalans was knockout rugby and we played a sudden-death game against Castleford to get into the top-six.

Now we’ve got Wigan away with a place in the Grand Final for the winners and obviously that is going to be a tough game, but when you are coming from fifth in the table they all are and you have to do it the hard way.

Wigan will be favourites, but all season I have felt we were capable of getting this far, even at the start of the year when we were losing and going through a bit of turmoil. The belief was always there, we just needed things to click and for us to get a bit of a break.

I think a few months ago we were all looking at our attack clicking, but it’s the defence which has come right and got us to where we are. We are not leaking anywhere near as many points as we were earlier on and that’s keeping us in games.

Our attack hasn’t been great for the last few matches, but because our defence has been strong we have been able to score enough points to get the wins we need.

Towards the back end of the year it starts getting wet and conditions become tougher and there’s not that many points scored anyway, so you end up scoring off a kick or a mistake and you have to win games off the back of your defence. That’s what’s giving us a solid chance.

Wigan had the opportunity to rest some players towards the end of the league rounds and they had last weekend off, but that can work one of two ways. They will either come out fully refreshed and firing, or it could hinder them a bit. We will only know after the final whistle, but hopefully it has taken away a bit of their momentum.

We have some momentum ourselves and I feel like we deserve to be confident and to go into the game believing we can win. We have worked really hard to get this far. Back in the spring we were looking at Toulouse’s results and hoping other teams would do us a favour, but now there’s four teams left in the competition and we are one of them.

We haven’t had it easy with injuries or suspensions, but getting to the semi-finals has been a real squad effort. Every team has their star players, but I feel like to win something the level of your non ex-factor players has to be really high. You have to all be playing for a common goal and that’s what we have got now.

The players who are coming into the team are playing to a really high level and when someone drops out, another player can step up and do the job. That hasn’t always been the case, but when it is, it sets the platform to be successful.

These players might not get the recognition they deserve externally, but in-house we make sure they get the plaudits and when your work is appreciated, that makes you do more of it.

People are enjoying working hard now because it is getting highlighted. When you are losing and you’re under a lot of scrutiny you do look for the big play, but if you strip it back and you look three or four tackles before, that’s often where it comes from. The guy who puts the ball down gets the spotlight, but there’s a lot of moving parts need to click into place before he can do that.

That is what we are all about. It is really important for people to be running hard and getting quick play-the-balls and tackling really well. Those are the people we appreciate the most in our organisation and I think that has a positive effect all round.

We have got a real hunger to work hard at the moment, across the board and it’s really exciting, not just for the first team. The under-18s have reached their Grand Final, the women play in theirs on Sunday, the wheelchair team have won the Challenge Cup and finished top of their league and the physical disabilities side are PDRL champions.

Well done to them all and it just shows what a strong position the club is in now.