Leeds Rhinos Netball need to play to Joyce Mvula's strengths more, says Liana Leota

That is the message from director of netball Liana Leota to her players as they look to jumpstart their 2024 campaign.

After starting the season with three straight defeats, Rhinos finally got off the mark a fortnight ago with a thumping win over Strathclyde Sirens.

Although it was always going to be difficult to back that up with a second win at high-flying Loughborough Lightning last Saturday night, old habits came back to haunt Rhinos, not least their slow starts and for Leota, an inability to make the most of Mvula.

The 6ft 1in Malawi international, pictured, was one of Leeds’ key recruits in the off-season and while the former Manchester Thunder player has been scoring plenty of goals, her team-mates need to make more use of her.

“She’s been a real anchor, she gets better week on week,” said Leota.

“There are still times that we can look to find her, sometimes we lack the courage or the confidence to do that. But I definitely think we can utilise her more because there’s not many goalkeepers that can compete with her in the air one v one.

“Our mid-court needs the courage and the confidence to go to her. If she is double-teamed then our goal attack has to play a pivotal part in attacking that space.”

Two more marquee signings are starting to gel into the spine of the team.

Goal keeper Geva Mentor brings more experience than anyone after 20 years in the game and six trips to the Commonwealth Games.

And in front of her in goal defence, Australian Zoe Davies is beginning to make the starting position her own.

“Being Australian, Zoe had to find her feet in the pre-season and first couple of rounds, but I definitely think she’s got used to the UK style,” explained Leota.

“Now she’s getting used to it she’s a threat with the ball on attack, she brings it through with a lot of confidence and lets those long balls go.

“Defensively she’s getting turnovers as a relatively tall goal defender, that’s been huge for us and she and Geva are working really well for us at the moment.

“Zoe has had to fight for that position and has fought hard.”

Rhinos are using the Allam Sports Centre in Hull as one of their home venues for tonight’s visit of London Pulse (7.30pm), a team who last week were guilty of a poor start themselves.

Leota said: “Severn Stars came out fighting from the start and attacked Pulse, got a healthy lead and maintained that. So for me, we have to have a good start in order to put ourselves in a good fight from the first quarter onwards, otherwise we’re just chasing quarter two.

“Yes we are good at chasing, we just don’t want to be doing it all the time.

“Right now our structure and game plan is really good, it’s just our basic execution and individual errors that is costing us week after week.”