WATCH: Slow start cost Leeds Rhinos dearly at Catalans - McDermott

But he also believed his players were punished for playing in the right spirit.

Under-strength Rhinos were beaten 33-20 after trailing 16-0 early in the game and the boss conceded: “If a team comes at us and throws all their ammunition at us, we are offering not enough resistance and that’s something that’s got to change.”

McDermott insisted: “There’s more in us than we showed, we’ve got more resistance in us.

“They should be rightfully very disappointed with the start.

“When they started to use their shoulder and started to bang a little bit, it became a contest.

“We never had momentum in the first half and for them to get into it and get back to within touching distance is credit to what is a very young and inexperienced group.”

From trailing 16-0, Rhinos cut the gap to 17-14 and looked to be getting on top, but Richie Myler could not find winger Ryan Hall with a pass which would have created a try and then Jack Walker was prevented from scoring by a high tackle from Leeds academy product Jodie Broughton.

McDermott described those incidents as “big moments”.

Of Walker, he said: “If he stays down and the bloke who made the high tackle gets sin-binned, we go on and win the game, but I tell my players to get up.

“When [Catalans’] Greg Bird stayed down to try and get everybody’s attention to what wasn’t a crusher tackle at all, when Ashton Golding was on him, those players are harming the game of rugby league.

“That’s a soft thing to do. I will always tell my players to get up. I don’t think the game was lost there and then when Jack Walker got up and tried to carry on running, but it’s one of those moments that you feel hard done by.

“But I’d also mention the start when we naively went out and thought a seven out of 10 defensive version against a desperate Catalans team was going to be good enough.

“We need to start with a nine out of 10 defensive version.”

Rhinos, who have taken just seven of the last 20 points on offer, were without nine players due to injury and one through suspension.

“That’s a factor for sure,” McDermott added. “Is that why we lost? No, we could have beaten Catalans. My job is to tell the players we have certain people missing so you have to go out and be better and more focused, but without scaring the life out of them and saying you’ve got a load of blokes missing so we’ve got to be nine out of 10.

“It’s a difficult balance to strike each week, but I am watching young Mikolaj Oledzki and Jack Ormondroyd and Josh Walters and Jack Walker, Ash Golding, Cam Smith and Jimmy Keinhorst go through some really tough situations together.

“That was a tough loss, especially where we are on the league table. They lost the game, but they didn’t look a beaten team – they kept fighting and coming up with some stuff.

“There are things we need to be better at and that’s what we’ll focus on.”