Leeds Rhinos boss Brad Arthur 'thrilled' for players after win at Giants, admits 'we did dumb things'

It was Arthur’s first win in his second game as team boss, five days after a 20-12 home loss to Hull KR. Leeds scored after just two minutes and led 18-6 at the end of a scrappy first period, but dominated the second half.

Arthur felt Leeds’ first win in three matches was a step in the right direction and was happy with how they responded when things went wrong, but admitted they are still nowhere near where he thinks they can be. “I am thrilled for the boys, seeing how happy they were after the game,” he said.

“I don’t know much about the Super League at the moment and I am learning bits and pieces, but I was told we were coming to a nice stadium, not to expect much of a crowd, so we really focussed this week on coming and making our own atmosphere and having a bit of character about our performance.

“I don’t think we were real smart at times and I don’t think we executed great; we are still a long way off where I’d like us to be, but I thought we showed plenty of character. We kept good field position on the back of red zone defence and our line was good. It was better than it was for periods last week. We did some good things last week in our defensive line, but we managed to sustain it for longer tonight.”

The coach added: “I feel like we did a lot of dumb things and some of our execution wasn’t fantastic, but in terms of how we want to play, we built the game at the start and put a couple of tries on just before half-time. We came back and reset in the second half, we had good field position and we built the game again and then we put a couple of tries on. You have to earn the right to play and earn the right to win.”

Ash Handley’s second try, on the hour mark, made the result safe and Leeds added two more late on. Arthur reflected: “I was really happy with the last 15 minutes, how professional we were in terms of trying to keep field position, stay down their end of the field and not self destruct.

“They are trying hard to play what we’ve talked about and practised, but we got a couple of kicks wrong, we had them under the pump on the tryline and gave away some sloppy penalties. We can’t accept that, we have to be happy with the win, but if we accept that we will continue to get it. That’s something we will be looking at straight away tomorrow.”

Kicks by former Giants half-back Matt Frawley created Leeds’ first two tries and he scored their third. He also had a strong game against Hull KR, having been dropped for the match before that.

Frawley had a tough start to his Leeds career, but Arthur stressed: “I’ve just treated him with a bit of respect. He’s an NRL player, he was down on a bit of confidence - or whatever it might have been - but I’ve just been really clear with what my expectations of him are and what he needs to do.

“I think he and Brodie [Croft] are striking up a good combination. Brodie can just worry about his running and kicking and Matt gets us around the field.”

Rhinos substitute prop Sam Lisone was placed on report for allegedly leading with an elbow in the first half and sin-binned, along with Giants’ Adam Milner, following a late scuffle. Arthur admitted he didn’t get a clear view of the first incident, but said: “From the initial [view] I thought he went with his shoulder and his elbow was down.”

Another concern was an injury to front-rower Mikolaj Oledzki late in the game. Rhinos have a long turnaround to their next fixture at Salford Red Devils on Saturday, August 3 and Arthur said: “He’s pretty tough, I think he got banged up in the ribs, but he’s right to play next week.”

Forward James Bentley played the final 30 minutes in his first appearance since suffering concussion in an Easter win at Castleford. “I thought he was tough,” Arthur said.

“He worked hard; for a bloke who hasn’t played for a long time, he did a lot of work. He was a nice injection in the second half, especially when we wanted to have that defensive mentality and keep them coming out of red zone.”