'They've got to know the rules': Leeds Rhinos boss questions late incident in loss to Warrington Wolves

Leeds led 14-6 after 51 minutes, but Warrington cut the gap to two early in the final quarter and scored the winning try in the set from a penalty after Rhinos loose-forward Keenan Palasia had been sin-binned for contact with a shoulder to opponent Lachlan Fitzgibbon’s head. The Leeds boss had no major complaints about the yellow card, but was mystified by an incident right at the end of the game.

Warrington unsuccessfully challenged a knock-on ruling which would have given Leeds one play to try to snatch the game. But with Rhinos’ forwards apparently packed for the scrum, referee Tom Grant allowed the clock to run down and the hooter went before they had a chance to put the ball in.

Arthur said his players were told Leeds having only five players in the scrum was the reason the clock was restarted following the unsuccessful captain’s challenge, but he insisted that was a mistake by the officials. “We still had 10 seconds,” he said. “The likelihood of winning from there is remote, but it doesn’t matter - there’s still 10 seconds left. You can't just blow time out, they need to know the rules; there’s only 12 players, five in the scrum - we had five in the scrum.”

Arthur didn’t want to comment on the yellow card until having watched replays, but admitted: “I’ve seen plenty of them before, so as long as they are consistent…”

Overall, Arthur felt Rhinos let the two points slip through their fingers, describing it as “a game we tried really hard and probably felt we should have got the result”. He said: “We’ve got some lessons we need to take out of it, definitely. It was a very good effort and we were good physically.

“It was a really good first half, plenty of fight and spirit and great tryline scramble. We had to defend our tryline for long periods, especially at the start of the second half, but in the end there were too many errors and penalties in the second half. We made it tough on ourselves at times, but I was happy with the way we had plenty of fight and grit. With 20 minutes to go, if we did a couple of things different in one or two of those sets it could have been a different result for us.”

He added: “I thought a couple of the penalties might have been a bit harsh. We can’t get through four or five rounds and be the least penalised team and then all of a sudden we get seven penalties against us in the second half. It doesn’t make sense, because we’ve worked so hard on our discipline. I need to have a look at those penalties to see if there’s something we need to do differently to tidy them up, because it’s something we’ve worked extremely hard on.”

Rhinos picked up an injury concern, losing stand-off Brodie Croft early in the second half. “He had some hamstring tightness,” Arthur revealed. “It was when we got a turnover and made half a break, he went to take off and slipped on the surface. It just wasn’t worth the risk.”

Rhinos have no game next weekend and return to action away to Salford Red Devils - where they won in Super League round two - on Thursday, April 10. “We’ll give the players a couple of days off,” Arthur confirmed. “We’ve played St Helens, Wigan and Warrington - three really good teams who physically are going to test you. I am happy how we’ve come through, not result-wise, but we’ve been right in the matches and if we just tidy up a few things all of them could have been wins.”