Brian McDermott bemoans Leeds’ away-day travails despite witnessing win

Posted Monday, April 30, 2018 by PA

Brian McDermott admitted Leeds need to do more when visiting teams like Hull KR after his side beat the Robins 20-18 at KCOM Craven Park.

It was the eighth league game Leeds have played this season which has been decided by four points or fewer and the Rhinos lost their previous two fixtures by a single point.

The victory, which moved Leeds up to fifth, was built on strong defence after they limited Rovers to two tries, which pleased McDermott.

“We were really good in effort, and some parts of our defence were outstanding and some parts of our attack were OK to good,” said the boss.

“There is lots of improvement in us and we come away with a tight win instead of a close loss.

“Defence is huge part of the game and you can’t win without having a strong defence but we can’t keep nicking games by a couple of points.

“You don’t come to Hull KR on a Sunday afternoon when it’s not a TV game and expect an easy game.

“They were always going to put in a big effort with the ex-Leeds players that they’ve got and they played with a lot of ascendancy in the first half especially.

“All things considered, I’d give this win a thumbs up. In terms of performance I’ll break it down and say it wasn’t as good.

“We had three blokes in the first half that weren’t getting things right at all.

“We need to come here and win by a better margin than the two points, but that’s disrespectful to KR.”

Rovers coach Tim Sheens felt his side only had themselves to blame for the defeat, which featured a high number of errors and poor options.

“We made too many mistakes and not enough completed sets,” Sheens said.

“We had too many turnovers which gave them seven tackle sets.

“Our completion rate was only 50 per cent in the second half and as boring as that is, you can’t win games when you don’t complete at a higher level.

“I’m not asking for 100 per cent, but we’re disappointed.

“For courage I give them 200 per cent but we shot ourselves in the foot too many times – we have no toes left.

“We took too many poor options and we could have won the game had we taken the right options.

“While there are some issues from the officials’ point of view, we had the chance to win the game.

“The Chris Atkin try, because he ruled on the forward pass, he blew the whistle before Chris got the ball and it’s not like a knock-on where you get a free play.

“And the opportunity just on half-time, the first pass was deemed forward not the second but I’ll still argue it was flat.”