Veteran pack man Jamie Jones-Buchanan expects Leeds Rhinos to get a lift from Challenge Cup tie

Rhinos go into tomorrow’s Coral Challenge Cup fifth-round tie at home to Workington Town bottom of Betfred Super League with just two wins from 10 matches.

It is a desperate situation for the eight-time champions, but Jones-Buchanan – who will retire at the end of this year – reckons the Cup break can be good for them.

“The cup’s a clean slate, it’s an opportunity to forget about the league and put it to one side,” said the former Great Britain and England forward who was a Cup winner in 2014.

“Obviously performances lead into other performances.

“I remember in 2005 we lost about five games on the bounce at the beginning of the season, but we ended up getting to the Challenge Cup final.

“In that year we were a completely different team. We didn’t win the final, but it just showed how the cup is a completely different competition and league form has no bearing on it.

Town are fifth in Betfred League One, the third tier of the British game and their players are part-time, but they have a coach who knows about winning big games and Jones-Buchanan said Leeds can’t take anything for granted. Jones-Buchanan predicted: “Leon Pryce is going to sniff an opportunity.

“He will be looking at a fragile Leeds team – in terms of results – coming off another defeat and they are going to come down here to win. There’s no doubt about that and we can’t underestimate Workington by any means because we are very, very good in offence, but we have got a lot of work to do defensively.

“I don’t think it’s any time to recoup or put your feet up, it’s very much business as usual, but it has got to be better business than it has been in previous weeks.

“We’ve not had a great start to the season and we can’t afford for it to be disastrous in the Challenge Cup.”

Of Rhinos’ form so far, Jones-Buchanan added: “We’ve lost a lot of games, we’ve performed well in some and just capitulated in others at certain key periods.

“We are not getting a lot of consistency and that breeds a lot of anxiety and a lack of confidence in a couple of people.

“You’ve seen that in some individual performances. We need to regroup and gather ourselves because we’ve got some world-class players.

“We can score points and if you look at KPIs [key performance indicators] we are at the top of the table for some of the offensive pointers, but just defensively we are a long way off.

“We need to gain a bit more synergy and cohesiveness and just relax in games and enjoy it. If we do that I think we’ll start gaining some results.”

Defence has been Rhinos’ Achilles heel all year. Considering where they are going wrong, Jones-Buchanan said: “There’s new players and new systems and you need to work on them and start to trust in one another.

“For whatever reason, we are not defending as well as we probably could, but we are all still learning, myself included.

“I am 37 and I’ve been at Leeds 20 years and I am still learning. I understand I can’t play with this group the way I did with the group 10 years ago.

“That’s interesting for me because I’ve never been in that position before.

“I’ve never been bottom of the table in these circumstances, but I go into schools and businesses and talk about adversity and how it refines and defines us.

“I have no doubt this will as well and, when I look back on this period, I will have learned some valuable lessons from it.

“But while I am here it still hurts very much. I have been a fan of Leeds Rhinos since I was nine, standing in the South Stand and when I finish playing I will go back there.

“It hurts. I have been at Leeds through the most successful period in Leeds’ history and through some of its darkest times as well and I have never turned my face away.”

Jones-Buchanan added: “I have never walked away from the grind.

“I will stick with it, it is tough, but we won’t give in.”