YEP Jury: ‘You have to ask yourself where is Leeds Rhinos’ next victory coming from?’

LUKE CROSSFIELD

London Broncos were deserving winners last Friday night. Full credit to Danny Ward and his team for playing honest, well disciplined rugby league.

I am really annoyed with our first-half performance and last six minutes where we collapsed. I hope the players have had a hard look at themselves this week because that was simply not good enough.

We are a team in transition, no matter how much money has been splashed on marquee players.

Nathaniel Peteru had a very good game and congratulations to Tom Briscoe on his 300th career appearance. You have to ask yourself where is the next victory coming from?

On to this week’s game and a trip to Perpignan. Catalan Dragons away is always the fixture I look out for first and the weather is looking promising.

It would be nice to come back home with the two points, however that is going to be tough against a Catalan team who ground out a good win at Hull KR on Sunday. I want to see a massive improvement in performance this week.

ANDREW SUTCLIFFE

So we’re seven games in and sit second bottom. We deserve to be there and with the games to come could probably stay there for some time.

How on earth we snatched a defeat from the jaws of victory only the players will know. The ability to close out a game seems to be an issue and something we haven’t improved on from last season. After a very flat first half, improvements were shown and we deservedly took what appeared to be a winning lead.

Then six minutes of madness assisted by some fortuitous penalties saw London take the victory. London’s game plan appeared simple, slow down the ruck which the ref allowed and take their chances through kicks. Not good to watch.

Some positives for Leeds was Nathaniel Peteru’s best game and young Tom Holroyd didn’t look out of place.

On to Catalans away and we’ve had mixed recent results there. Perhaps if the sun shines it may suit some of our overseas players! I’m not sure things can get much worse for us so perhaps this week our luck may change?

THOMAS LAWRENCE

It’s now the nature of Super League that there are no easy games any more, but the easiest of the tough set of fixtures is London at home – another fixture we have failed to deliver in due to our inability to defend kicks and get out of reach of the opposition when in front.

There are now four complete halves of rugby this season that Leeds have failed to score in, and with the exception of a 20-minute spell at St Helens we have not seen anything near a complete team performance from Leeds.

Some squad selections are also bemusing, like the decision to leave out Brad Dwyer, who on many occasions so far this season has looked like our best attacking threat.

We can only hope and believe that the lads can put things right; something has to click at some point. Nonetheless, we are vulnerable and have a target on our back, and other teams are certainly enjoying our struggle. It doesn’t get any easier this week as Leeds head to the south of France to take on Catalans Dragons, whose opening to the season has had peaks and troughs – hopefully they are at a trough on Saturday evening!

OLIVER HAWKHEAD

I still don’t quite believe what happened on Friday night. Both the result and the turnaround in the last 10 minutes don’t quite seem real.

I’m pretty sure we had two teams playing in that game; one that played the first 40 and the dying minutes of the second half and another that came out and scored 16 unanswered points after the break.

I had the pleasure of commentating on this game and I remember saying pre-match that we had to put the game to bed in the first 20 minutes otherwise London would have their tails up.

We failed to do this and ultimately suffered the consequences.

Our discipline was improved, however the goalline defence still needs work. It was nice to see Brett Ferres bring the whole team round at full time and I just hope there were stern but productive words said between the players.

I went to the academy game on Saturday and I was once again impressed by their performance.

So whatever happens this season, I have confidence that the future is bright.

KATIE BURROWS

At the risk of being unpopular, I’m going to choose to focus on the positives from last Friday.

No, we didn’t put in a great performance (especially in that first half) and yes we are not where we want to be in the table; but I thought for 30 minutes we showed an improvement on the previous two weeks and a lot of determination, which has definitely been lacking.

In general, our forwards performed well and Nathaniel Peteru in particular had a good game. Trent Merrin was on good form – hopefully the rumours of him heading back to Australia are just that.

And I also thought Tui Lolohea showed glimpses of his kicking ability, similar to what we saw at Salford back in February.

I’m not expecting much at Catalans this weekend, it’s always a difficult place to play. I just hope we put in a good performance for the full 80 minutes. We’ve been spoilt by success in recent years, and I think we need to lower our expectations a little and get behind our team – we’re not going to come good overnight, these things take time.

TIM NUTTALL

I am still not entirely sure how, with less than six minutes to play, Leeds Rhinos managed to throw the game away against London to condemn us to another defeat.

The images of Konrad Hurrell at the hooter speak more than any words could.

It isn’t the first time this season that lack of game management has let us down, but the final play options continue to be woeful.

There looks to be no real plan, other than to look to kick to touch and apply pressure in defence.

We have to learn how to hurt teams more. Some of the tries we did score on Friday had some good elements, we just have to put that kind of play together for much longer periods.

I feel like I’m typing the same things every week at the moment, but we simply must be harder to score against and defend better as a whole.

Catalans Dragons provide us with our next challenge on Saturday, who are always difficult to play against at their place. We are going to have to improve in all areas if we are to come away with anything.