'Simple skill' failure blamed as Leeds Rhinos coach makes scathing assessment of loss at Catalans Dragons

Rhinos haven’t scored at Stade Gilbert Brutus since their win in the 2022 play-offs, having been beaten 61-0 and 26-0 in the past two seasons. Saturday’s 11-0 defeat left Arthur “frustrated” after seeing his men let the opposition off the hook and put themselves under pressure with a constant series of errors.

Catalans led 1-0 at half-time, through a drop goal on the final play and grabbed two tries off Leeds’ mistakes in the second half. The visitors went close in the opening moments and had a touchdown disallowed by the video referee just before the interval, but otherwise rarely looked like getting over the line.

It was a far cry from the previous two weeks, when Rhinos beat Salford Red Devils and Castleford Tigers and while Arthur had no complaints over his men’s effort, he admitted: “It was frustrating in terms of some of the simple execution of our skill.”

Leeds have kept their error count and the number of penalties conceded at a low level this year, but the wheels came off both. Arthur said: “It was a poor completion rate and we didn’t build any pressure. You can’t do it one week and not the next - we need to be more reliable and consistent in that.

“It is a simple game and we just didn’t do the simple things good enough. It felt like we had to defend our tryline for long periods and we did that, but when we did we put ourselves under pressure again and found ourselves back on the tryline. We created some opportunities, but some simple skill let us down. The effort and attitude was there, but we need to execute our roles better, from one to 17.”

Both sides had a player sin-binned for a dangerous tackle in the first half. Of Leeds full-back Jake Connor’s yellow card, Arthur said: “I’ve seen plenty of crushers this year that have been put on report and not penalised. I didn’t think it was a crusher.”

Rhinos were without winger Ryan Hall because of a rib injury, but Arthur is hopeful he will be available for Friday’s Betfred Challenge Cup tie at St Helens. Scrum-half Matt Frawley failed a head injury assessment, ruling him out of the next game, but was “okay” in the changing rooms afterwards.

Australian Ethan Clark-Wood, who joined Rhinos last month, replaced Hall on the right-wing and Arthur said: “It is hard coming into a new team after only training for a couple of weeks, but I thought he did a pretty good job. He certainly didn’t cost us the result.”

The defeat makes Friday’s visit to Saints even more of a big game, despite being in a different competition. Arthur insisted: “The good thing about rugby league is you’ve got next week.

“You are only as good as your last game and at the moment, our last game wasn’t great. We’ll keep their spirits up and tidy up some execution around our skill and get stuck into it next week.”