Leeds Rhinos were own worst enemies in mauling by St Helens, says Callum McLelland

The 48-0 drubbing by defending champions St Helens two days ago was Leeds’ biggest margin of defeat in a home Super League fixture.

It was only the third time they have failed to score in the competition, now in its 25th season and their first shut out at Headingley since March, 1992.

Leeds went into the game on a five-match winning run and in top spot on the table, but dropped three places following the eight-try rout.

The Headingley side were out-played in every department and McLelland, who made only his fifth senior appearance for Leeds and his second Super League start, admitted harsh lessons have to be learned.

“Take nothing away from St Helens, but we made it harder for ourselves than it should have been,” said the Scottish international stand-off, who was drafted into the team in place of the injured Rob Lui.

“Just silly penalties, silly errors, we didn’t finish our sets too well and obviously you can’t give Saints that much ball and that much field position with the calibre of players they’ve got and the team they are.

“I thought we were our own worst enemies.”

McLelland, 20, described Leeds’ second defeat of 2020 as “a bit of a wake-up call” ahead of this Saturday’s showdown with new leaders Wigan Warriors, to be played on neutral ground at St Helens.

“You have to put your best performance out every week, or else you’ll lose,” warned McLelland.

“Every team has a bad day at the office and ours was [on Sunday].

“This is when we’ll see what we are really made of.

“We are playing another top-class outfit this week.

“Wakey put in a decent performance against them and didn’t quite come out on top so it just shows we are going to have to be on top form against teams like Wigan and Saints if we want to be competing at the end of the year.”

With handovers having replaced scrums for the rest of this season and tackle restarts taking the place of penalties after ruck infringements, there is now little time for players to take a breath and once a team gains momentum, they become difficult to stop.

That has been illustrated by a series of one-sided scorelines since Super League returned from its coronavirus layoff and when games have been close, one team has fought back from a hefty deficit.

McLelland believes the rule changes have “completely changed the game”.

He warned: “When discipline’s not great and you are making silly errors, that’s a killer, especially with the new rules. If you make an error or give a penalty away, then do a six-again after that, you are defending for so many sets.”

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