'We're going to get stung again': Leeds Rhinos captain Kruise Leeming reflects on poor discipline, individual efforts and some positives from hammering at St Helens

Rhinos were beaten 42-12 and had substitute forward Zane Tetevano sent-off for a foul on former teammate Konrad Hurrell, either side of sin-binnings for Bodene Thompson (tripping) and James Bentley (preventing a play-the-ball).

Though he felt there were some positives, Leeming admitted it was a bitterly disappointing night for Rhinos who have now suffered successive defeats for the first time since March/April.

Their hopes of qualifying for the play-offs are hanging by a thread and they have yet to beat any of the current top six this season. Thursday was their 11th successive lost to Saints, a dismal run stretching back to 2018 and eight of those defeats have been by 16 points or more.

Leeds went into the game with high hopes, boosted by Harry Newman’s return to the starting side and the inclusion of Aidan Sezer for his first game for almost three months, but a Saints side missing several key players proved too strong.

Rhinos were unfortunate to be 16-6 behind at half-time and trailed by only eight approaching the final quarter, but imploded in the closing stages as Saints took advantage of the flurry of cards to add three tries.

Leeds, who already have props Tom Holroyd and Muizz Mustapha serving long bans, now also face the loss of forwards Tetevano and Thompson, though Bentley is unlikely to be suspended for his act of petulance.

Reflecting on a miserable end to what had been, in parts, an encouraging performance, Leeming said: “I think in the first 40 minutes we were a team.

“It’s probably the most as a team we’ve looked; we were scrambling for each other and I think our defence looked solid.

“Going in at half-time people must have been thinking ‘we could do this’ and then we just started to try and solve it on our own.

“I think that’s the worst bit about the loss.

“Obviously the scoreline blew out, but just talking in the changing room, the worst thing for us was people went to try and solve things on their own.

“When games get tough, when it gets really hard, you need to go together and do it together.

“No one man can beat Saints on his own, so that’s the most disappointing bit for us.”

Leeming had no qualms about admitting Rhinos’ habit of collecting cards and suspensions is “something we need to sort out”.

He said: “The discipline has been nowhere near good enough all year.

“I haven’t looked at them back, but it is happening to us all the time.

“We can’t just keep blaming the refs, we need to look inwards and look at ourselves.

“We need to sort that out or we are going to get stung again.”

That said, Leeming believes Leeds did show signs, for spell in the game, of playing the sort of rugby coach Rohan Smith is trying to encourage.

“You could see a little bit of what Rohan has done with us,” he insisted.

“There were a lot of positives to take from it.

“I thought our D [defence] was solid and there were some nice bits of rugby as well, but we just need to be able to stick in games for longer, especially against the top teams.

“That’s the challenge, the better teams can do it for longer and that’s what we are trying to build towards.”