Peter Smith's Leeds Rhinos player ratings and match report as couple score 3s v Leigh Leopards: gallery

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out Rhinos simply aren’t consistent enough at the moment to be a real force in Betfred Super League.

After two good wins, they went into the game in decent form and with a strong, relatively settled 17, but were blown away in the opening quarter, when they went 16-0 behind.

In front of a crowd of 6,686, Leigh were more or less faultless for 30 minutes, but then started to make mistakes. Rhinos cut the gap to 10 at the interval, but didn’t ask enough questions of Leopards’ defence in the second-half, despite spells of pressure.

Rhinos haven’t started well in most games, but this was a shocker. The smoke from the fireworks had barely cleared when Edwin Ipape touched down from Lachlan Lam’s grubber; then six later Lam was the provider with a pass to put Kai O’Donnell in to make it 10-0 after as many minutes.

Ben Reynolds missed the second conversion so it could have been worse - and soon was as the outstanding Ipape went over from acting-half on 18 and this one was converted.

Leigh missed two big chances after that, John Asiata spilled Ipape’s pass in front of the line and Ricky Leutele was held up over it.

Leeds’ only good field position in the opening 38 minutes came via a penalty and Zane Tetevano knocked-on.

But just before the interval, Nene Macdonald stole the ball from Gareth O’Brien - following his own kick - and Blake Austin put James Bentley through a gap on the final play of the half, Rhyse Martin improving.

Leeds should have been further behind, but this time they couldn’t stage one of the second-half fightbacks they have become known for.

The final 40 was evenly fought and Leeds were better defensively. They also spent more time near Leigh’s line, but looked disorganised and made some costly errors.

Leigh went 12 points clear just after the hour when Reynolds booted a penalty after a high shot by Justin Sangare and though Leeds kept trying, it clearly wasn’t going to be their night.

That was confirmed when Reynolds booted a late penalty and the hosts were certainly good value for their first Super League win over Rhinos.

Leigh received all the game’s three set restarts. The penalty count was six-two in their favour.

Here’s how the Rhinos players rated.