Leeds Rhinos reaction: Castleford Tigers beaten but here's why coach Brad Arthur was 'not pleased'

Leeds led 18-0 at half-time and 38-6 with 17 minutes left, but Tigers finished the game on top by scoring the final three tries and Arthur felt his team let themselves down in that period. Asked in his post-match press conference how pleased he was with the performance, Arthur admitted: “I’m not.”

He said: “I'm really happy with the first 60 minutes, but we need to be a 80-minute team. We need to respect ourselves and the opposition more. We didn't do that in the last 15 minutes. We’ve done all right to get to 38 points and I don’t know why we got bored with that. The positive for us is I don’t think we got any injuries out of the game and we can learn that lesson of the last 20 minutes without it costing us two points.”

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The coach said his players felt the same way. He added: “As soon as I walked into the sheds it wasn’t the sheds of a team that had won a game of footy. That pleases me. We addressed that straight away and we'll watch it later in the week, but at the end of the day it's tough to win games so we have to enjoy the win. We sang the song and had a beer, but it’s a good lesson for us.”

Of the end to the game, Arthur said: “I don’t know if we took our foot off the gas, but we didn’t manage the last 20 minutes well enough. We pushed a couple of silly passes and tried to play too cute and pretty, instead of playing tough like we were in the first 60.

“We gifted [Tigers’ tries] to them, but as long as we learn from it…It is a long season, we are only in round three; we are miles away from where I want us to get to and where the team wants to get to, but it is important to chalk up wins.”