Huddersfield Giants v Leeds Rhinos: Old habits die hard for Lachie Miller, reveals Brad Arthur

After 18 competitive games for Leeds the pacy former Cronulla Sharks and Newcastle Knights man has made more tackle busts, 144, than anyone else in the competition, but 21 errors have blotted his copybook.

One of his four tries came during last Saturday’s 20-12 home defeat by Hull KR, but Miller also made several costly mistakes. Having spent much of his career playing rugby union sevens, the 29-year-old had only 19 NRL games under his belt when he joined Leeds in pre-season and his lack of top-level experience in the 13-a-side code has been evident at times.

Last week’s defeat was Brad Arthur’s first game in charge of Leeds and he has been working hard with Miller ahead of tonight’s crucial visit to Huddersfield Giants. “He did some really good things, but then he had some things in his game which he’d like to remove,” Arthur said of Miller’s performance against the Robins.

“He is a senior player, he needs to be better than that. He did a lot of good things, we’ve just got to take out a couple of those bloopers he had which took away from his game.”

Arthur stressed the full-back will retain his place in the team: “You don’t need to take him out, because you want him in the firing line - he has done a lot of good things for us. There’s stuff I can’t coach that he can bring to the team. There were just some detail errors about his positional play; he did a lot of moving and running last week, but wasted a lot of energy unnecessarily.

“I’ve just tidied up what he should be looking for, where he needs to start; he sometimes gets in position a bit late and is covering ground he doesn’t need to.

"That’s just going to be a bit of work with him around his game sense and what he is actually looking for as it unfolds.”

Miller wasn’t the only player to make errors at crucial stages of last week’s defeat and the coach believes patience and concentration will be crucial if Leeds are to record their first win in three matches tonight.

He saw “real positive signs from the team” last week, particularly at the start of the game, but admitted: “When we started to get a little bit tired and fatigued and under a bit of pressure, I saw us revert back to some habits we are trying to remove. Those habits are going to take a while to break. This week we want to be able to try and push through longer periods under pressure and try and embed those good habits we started to get. We’ve just got to keep pushing it, making it important and holding blokes accountable.

“When they stuck to what they were supposed to do and the plan, it worked for long periods. But if you want to win games and beat the better teams you need to do it when you are under pressure the most and under fatigue the most.

“That’s just a concentration thing. It comes down to individuals staying in the game, staying in the moment and playing each tackle at a time.”

Rhinos are seventh in Super League, four points outside the play-offs. Defeat to the Giants would be a potentially fatal blow to their top-six hopes.

“I reckon away games are a test of character,” said Arthur. “At home everything’s in your favour and you’re nice and comfortable.

“We are out of our comfort zone this week and I want to see what sort of character we’ve got.

“We haven’t talked about it being a must-win, but I am sure everyone knows it’s important we get the two points.

“We need points to bridge that gap, but what we’ve talked about is the stuff we did well [last week], doing that for the full 80 minutes.

“The steps forward we make, we can’t go backwards on those. That has got to be the bare minimum standard and we’ve got to grow on that.

“Then the areas we got wrong under pressure, the simple detail, we’re not going to get all of that right but there’s got to be less of it.”

Like Leeds, Giants have had a recent change of coach with Luke Robinson replacing Ian Watson on an interim basis.

They did Rhinos a favour with a shock home win over sixth-placed Salford Red Devils last week and Arthur noted: “They are a tidy team, they just graft.

“They try and play the long game and drag you into a real fighting contest and probably hope you beat yourself. I think maybe that’s what we did last week, beat ourselves.”