Leeds Rhinos boss makes 'got lucky' admission after golden-point win at London Broncos

For the second time in less than two months, Leeds beat Betfred Super League’s bottom club thanks to a golden-point extra-time drop goal by stand-off Brodie Croft. Arthur was pleased with the win, but little else.

“There’s not a lot we can say about that performance,” he conceded after the 21-20 victory. “The other team was better than us today and we got the result. It’s just the way it is.”

Rhinos led 14-6 late in the first half and were 20-16 ahead with five minutes left, but a succession of errors and penalties kept London in the contest. Oli Leyland hit a post with his touchline kick after Broncos’ equalising try on 75 minutes and the hosts then missed with several drop goal attempts, including one by Jack Campagnolo which rebounded off the crossbar.

It was a similar story at AMT Headingley in July when Leeds also got out of jail with a Croft golden-point winner and Arthur accepted: “They [London] didn’t deserve to lose. Footy is a tough game sometimes, they were the better team. They hit the [metalwork] twice, they were unlucky.

“We got a bit of luck and we won the game, which is what we needed to do. We are going home with the two points, but we are not happy with how it happened. We have got a five-day turnaround and we know that performance is not good enough. I don’t need to go on and on about it.”

Rhinos play second-bottom Hull FC on Friday in their final home game of the campaign. They remain eighth in Betfred Super League, one point outside the top-six. Despite the victory, Leeds’ performance at Plough Lane was their poorest since Arthur took charge two months ago.

He said: “We’ve been up for a long time, our effort and physicality has been really good and I thought they beat us in that part of it today. I don’t want to take any credit away from them because they had a red-hot crack at it. We knew that was going to be the case and we just didn’t execute our footy anywhere near good enough.”

There were some positives, the coach reckoned. “We had to get to 90 minutes and at least we hung in there,” he reflected. “Rhyse Martin broke a record and we came through the game without any major injuries which is important into a five-day turnaround. And we got the two points. If we didn’t, the season was over, so we need to make the most of that now.”

Martin, who will join Hull KR for next season, scored 20 of Leeds’ 21 points and become only the 14th player in Leeds’ history to pass 1,000 for the club. “It’s great,” Arthur said. But he insisted: “It looked good on the scoreboard for him, but there were some things in his game also - he was just as guilty as some of the other guys around some of our efforts.”

Arthur revealed Croft had been ill during the week. “His game was only okay today,” he said. “He has been a bit crook all week and he probably played like that. But at the end of the day he won us the game, so he has earned his money.”