'Haven't been bad': boss Rohan Smith assesses Leeds Rhinos' Super League form for Huddersfield Giants visit

With seven of Betfred Super League’s 27 rounds played, Rhinos are eighth in the table, two places outside the play-offs zone.

Last week’s 20-12 result at Hull KR was Leeds’ fourth loss of the season and they face a tough challenge at home to sixth-placed Huddersfield Giants - who have the same number of points, but a game in hand - on Sunday evening.

Rhinos, the 2022 Grand Final runners-up, are already eight points behind unbeaten leaders Warrington Wolves and have yet to find any consistent form, but Smith insisted: “We haven’t been bad, I don’t think.”

He said: “We have played some good, tough games we’ve been beaten in and some good, tough games we’ve been successful in.

“We haven’t been at the level we’d like to be in some of those games, but we haven’t been bad and the other team have found a good game every time we’ve been beaten. We haven’t been beaten by a poor team.”

Two of Rhinos’ defeats so far were against sides in the current bottom three and, other than the round one drubbing at so far unbeaten table-toppers Warrington Wolves, they have tended to play well against the better teams.

As well as ending second-placed Catalans’ five-game winning start to the campaign, Rhinos showed signs of what they are capable of when they won at champions St Helens last month.

Stringing two or three victories together could make a significant difference to a team’s position on the ladder and Smith said: “I am not sure if the table has quite established itself yet.

“There’ll be a lot of fluctuation in the table this year. St Helens don’t lose very often and they lost a couple in a row and one bouncing ball, if [Hull’s] Brad Dwyer picks the ball up, that would have been three in a row, as good as they are.

“It is a very tight, hard-fought competition and there’s going to be ups and downs for most teams, I think.”

After losing their opening two games, to Warrington and Hull FC, Leeds won their next two and have since gone loss, win, loss.

The defeat at Hull KR was a setback just six days after Leeds produced a devastating attacking display to wipe out a 14-point interval deficit against Catalans.

But questioned, at his weekly pre-match press conference, about Rhinos’ apparent lack of consistency, Smith said: “Grouping the games together doesn’t really serve any benefit.

“All I am thinking about is trying to get a result and a performance this week against Huddersfield.

“Last week doesn’t matter, it won’t impact on performance this week. I understand [concerns about] consistency, we all want to play well week on week and see Ws next to it, but now it’s just about this weekend.”

The coach was encouraged by the resilience his men showed in the final 40 minutes at Craven Park, after Rovers’ kicking game - in wind and driving rain - left them teetering on the brink of a much heavier defeat.

Leeds lost winger David Fusitu’a to a serious ankle injury in the opening quarter, having been forced into a late reshuffle when full-back Richie Myler (paternity leave) and winger/centre Nene Macdonald (calf muscle) were ruled out.

“That was extremely tough conditions last week,” Smith reflected. “We didn’t defend kicks well, but there were a lot of things we did well in that game.

“The try [Hull KR scored] straight after half-time, we really let ourselves down, from a game-smarts point of view.

“But from that point it could have been easy to go ‘it’s cold, wet and we are down 18-0’, but we didn’t.

“It felt like in the end we probably ran out of time, rather than ran out of energy or interest. We were chasing hard.”