Matt Parcell targets consistency from Leeds Rhinos

Matt Parcell is tackled by Warrington's Harvey Livett and Mike Cooper.

Rhinos have slipped to sixth in Betfred Super League after winning only three of their last eight matches.

“We are a bit up and down at the moment,” is Parcell’s assessment, but he believes they can put things right.

“Our start wasn’t good enough, we made a lot of silly errors and that gifted Warrington a lot of ball,” said Parcell of the 32-22 loss to Warrington Wolves last week.

“We got back into it, but then we made some more errors and they scored a couple of good tries.

“I guess that’s where we are at at the moment, we are playing good in patches, but we need to play good for longer.”

Rhinos have trailed early on in most of their recent games and Parcell admitted they need to be faster out of the blocks.

“It is something to work on,” he said. “Definitely as we progress more into the season we are going to have to start a lot better.

“We can’t let ourselves be in that position before we start to play. It has been a few games now when we’ve let the other team get a few points on us and we’ve had to fight our way back.

“I guess it is good we can fight our way back, but we don’t want to be doing it to ourselves.”

Though Warrington’s 33 points was the most scored against Rhinos this year, Parcell believes Leeds can take heart from the fact they are competing in games even when not playing well.

He said: “The main positive we can take from it is we are definitely not playing to our potential and there’s a lot of improvement in us, but with 10 minutes to go we are still in the game.

“We’ve lost to Hull and Wigan the same way and the big positive is we’re not far away, we are not at our best, but we are still in games against the top teams.

“There is a lot of improvement in us, but we have to start winning soon. We need to get some points and keep in touch with the top-four. If we can do that, come the back end of the season if we do gel and find some form I think we can be strong in the competition.”

Rhinos were 10-0 down against Warrington when Parcell came off the bench in the opening quarter.

He said: “Mac [coach Brian McDermott] has a plan so we went with it. It probably didn’t work out like we had planned.

“We wanted a bit of a faster start to make them a bit fatigued before I came on, but that’s not really the way it worked out. Obviously I like to start games, but Mac had a plan so we went with it.”