Defence delights McDermott

Leeds coach Brian McDermott paid tribute to his side’s defensive resilience following their 28-6 win over Wakefield.

When asked whether he thought his side produced a scrappy performance, McDermott replied: “It would be fair to say that but I think everyone’s got to be careful of not demanding too much, too soon from a team that is having a rough run with injuries and blokes who are playing but are waiting on operations.

“In terms of how much we had to defend and our attitude towards defence – based on where it’s been for the last couple of weeks – it was outstanding.

“Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Luke Burgess and Kyle Leuluai were immense with the amount of defending we had to do.

“Biffa (Buchanan) in particular didn’t take a backwards step and had to defend a lot of traffic.

“It would be easy just to say ‘We were off there so I’m not happy’. I think we came alive for the final 15 minutes when we relaxed a little bit.”

His opposite number Jon Kear thought Leeds’ margin of victory flattered the visitors.

Harsh

He said: “I think it (the defeat) was a little bit harsh on us but it’s part of the learning curve that we’re having to go through as a team.

“The first half, I thought we dominated proceedings and we dominated them on the penalty count and lots of possession.

“But in the second half, Leeds had all the ball and the penalty count reflected that as well. They were absolutely clinical with their finishing.

“We showed just one or two inconsistencies which we can attempt to correct but if you look at our last two games, we’ve had three very good halves of rugby league and one where we’ve been given a bit of a lesson.

“We’ll learn from it and we’ll be better and we’ll be able to measure our improvement next time we play Leeds at Headingley.”