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Leeds Live
Leeds Live
Sport
Matthew Shaw

Rohan Smith on Leeds Rhinos' new playing style, Morgan Gannon injury and Blake Austin's withdrawal

General thoughts

We were a little shaky to start with and had a few moments on our left edge early in the game. But I really liked how we scrambled out of it and the most pleasing part of the evening was how many times people got under the ball to stop it from getting put down.

That gave us an opportunity to play how we practised. I liked how we planned each play for what it's worth rather than trying to get to a point or being too structured. We had good patience and good calmness. Nobody is getting too high or too low with whatever play is going on. They're just playing.

The spell of back-to-back-to-back tries

It was good footy. We've talked about playing that way - if it presents itself, throw the pass. The key part of all that is support play and being in that moment. That period of play probably typified that theme.

Read more: Rohan's rocking Rhinos ensure pressure mounts on Daryl Powell and his woeful Wolves

Richie Myler's piece of skill

That's what combat sport is all about - executing skill under physical pressure. It's not easy to compose yourself as a small human about to get hit as you're trying execute some skill. Much respect for the way he held himself together there.

Standout performers

It was a good team performance. There were great contributions across the board. We lost young Gannon early in the piece which required some extended minutes from our middle people because Donno was due to play in the middle and ended up needing to play the majority of the game on the left edge. It was a big shift for some of our middle people. Matt Prior hasn't played for five weeks or so and gave us a big shift, but they all contributed throughout.

Why Blake Austin came off

He's had a bit of a bug during the week. But he was fine, it just gave us a chance to give Kruise some time in the halves and extended time for Dwyer at dummy half.

Can the team go into the second half of the season with renewed confidence...

We look forward to Huddersfield on Friday night.

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