St Helens 40, Leeds Rhinos 10: YEP video review

After a 40-10 drubbing at St Helens, YEP rugby league writer Peter Smith reflects on another poor performance from Leeds Rhinos.

Transcript

00:00It's been a tough night for Leeds Rhinos here at the TWS Stadium, well beaten 40 points

00:06to 10 by St Helens. Leeds got off to a decent start, were 6-0 up, a terrific try scored

00:14by Ash Hanley, created by Brodie Croft in the opening stages, but Saints got 12-6 in

00:20front of their half-time cup, courtesy of a couple of Leeds errors, and then made a

00:24very good start to the second half from the home side's perspective, got a couple of back-to-back

00:30tries and from then on it was just a matter of how many they would score. The Leeds did

00:34pull a try back, a good finish from Lewis Roberts, they were a very bedraggled outfit

00:40by the end, hard to think of any positives really from tonight, some very flat individual

00:47performances, Leeds offered virtually nothing with the ball and the number of errors they

00:52made was quite spectacular. Time and again Leeds this season have shot themselves in

00:59the foot, got in a decent position and then just squandered it with poor errors, a series

01:04of poor errors, and that was the story again this evening. Leeds this season is in danger

01:11of falling apart, they could be four points adrift of the play-offs depending on other

01:16results this weekend and it's hard to see really where they're going to turn things

01:21around from. They got some players back today, Brodie Croft and Harry Newman both returned

01:28to the side, they're still missing some forwards, but it wasn't a bad Leeds team on paper, they're

01:34a lot better as a side than they showed tonight and than they've showed in recent matches.

01:40After the Catalan's defeat this was another really poor effort really against a top team,

01:47they've lost 40-10 to Leeds, 26-0 to Catalan's and at the moment they look a long way off

01:53the better teams in the competition, it's not quite all over but they need to find a

01:58big improvement soon or they're going to miss out on the play-offs again for the second

02:02successive year and that's just not good enough.