I thought it was a decidedly mixed bag from us yesterday. Whilst it’s easy to say that Leeds are a great side with much better players we didn’t play as well as we did in the first half at Cas. I thought we overplayed in the 1st half and pushed the pass when it wasn’t on. As a result we never really put any pressure on Leeds who looked very rusty at times. We defended our line well at times but let a couple of tries in by getting drawn in too easily to the Leeds playmakers. Sinfield and McGuire may be slower nowadays but they caused us problems.
I expect Walker was in the centres because of injuries to Blythe and Baille. Both he and Purtell struggled with Moon and Watkins’ footwork but who wouldn’t? I’m not convinced about Adam Henry.
I was disappointed to see Shaw drop two bombs that weren’t the most difficult but he took his try very well indeed. At times I thought our halfbacks tried too hard and threw passes that were never on, more composure is needed. We seemed to move too sideways on occasion without any runners straightening the attack. We were at a pace disadvantage out wide I suppose.
Siejka was particularly at fault when he rushed out of the line, missed the tackle on his man and then missed another for Moon to score. His goalkicking was underwhelming too. He was better at Cas though.
On the positives I thought all four props looked good. Davies and big Samir much more impressive, particularly Davies who ran in hard behind the ruck. The backrow too did well and Conroy looked full of running.
The second half we showed much more composure and forced quite a few dropouts thanks to better kicking and taking the right options in attack. By then all the interchanges were taking a toll on both teams organisation but all in all I felt better than I did at half time.
Looking at Leeds I thought their young fullback looked very promising. Briscoe caused us problems as did Cuthbertson and Ward. They might lack a yard of pace in the middle but they’re still good enough to get in the top 4
