Don't let 'Rohan Smith out' campaign become a witch hunt: latest Leeds Rhinos talking points

Rhinos have an opportunity to pick up a first home win in five attempts when they face Betfred Super League’s bottom club London Broncos on Friday. Here’s five talking points.

Let’s not have a witch hunt

It was hard to tell who had won at the end of last Sunday’s game, with Hull players being cheered from the field by their fans while a section of Leeds’ support called for coach Rohan Smith to be sacked. Fans have a right to voice their opinion, but it should be about what’s best for the club. At the moment it’s becoming personal and coulds develop into a witch hunt, which won’t help anybody.

Smith is trapped in a vicious circle; if Leeds lose it’s a nail in his coffin, but a win is papering over the cracks. Rhinos certainly didn’t play well at MKM Stadium, but they got the job done and that should earn them some credit. They’ve lost plenty of games like that in the past.

Trying too hard

At times against Hull, most notably the final moments of the first half, the ball was thrown about basketball style and that led to errors when a calmer approach might have brought a better result. When Leeds did play some basic rugby, like Brodie Croft’s pass to Cameron Smith for the third try, it worked.

Had Matt Frawley’s try been awarded - which it should have been - Rhinos may have gone on to win quite comfortably. They need to stop shooting themselves in the foot though. A knock-on from the restart after Smith’s try was punished and even in the final seconds a high tackle gave Hull one last opportunity, putting Leeds under avoidable pressure.

Tin hat time

Maybe everybody should take a breath and calm down a bit, on and off the field. With a third of the Super League season gone, Rhinos have won five games and lost four, which they won’t be writing home about, but isn’t a complete disaster either.

While eighth in the table is disappointing and not good enough for a huge club like Leeds, they are only two points behind third-placed Wigan Warriors and five of their next seven games are against teams in the bottom four. The season’s far from a write-off at this stage and a couple of good wins and performances could make a big difference.

Life of Riley

Riley Lumb’s debut was probably the most impressive by a Rhinos youngster since Ashley Gibson scored a hat-trick of tries and five goals against Leigh 20 years ago. The 19-year-old winger’s first try was a cracker, but the way he handled some testing kicks, his defence and strong carries in yardage were equally impressive. An easier option would have been to play Paul Momirovski on a wing and switch a forward to centre, but Leeds’ youngsters deserve a first team chance and, because of injuries to first-choice three-quarters, we could see more of them over the next few weeks.

Croft and Martin

Only London Broncos (14) and Hull FC (18) have scored fewer than Rhinos’ 26 tries in Super League this season. Clearly they need to get some strike players back in the field, but the worst thing that could happen at the moment is an injury to Brodie Croft.

The stand-off has more try assists (12) to his name than any other player in the competition and it would be even more of a struggle to score points without him. They are also fortunate their tally tends to go up in sixes rather than fours, Rhyse Martin having landed 27 goals from 31 attempts, a strike rate of 87 per cent.