RHINOS HIT BY A PERFECT STORM

Leeds went down fighting and McDermott wouldn’t have it any other way

LEEDS coach Brian McDermott backed his side’s expansive approach despite falling to a comprehensive defeat Down Under.

The Rhinos boss had stressed all week that his Super League champions wouldn’t die wondering in Melbourne, and they were level after 23 minutes following Ryan Hall’s opening try.

But a combination of handling errors, outstanding Storm defence and the loss of Jack Walker and Stevie Ward to injury all played their part in a dominant home win.

McDermott (right), who was also without four key props, said: “It was always a challenge to come here and throw something at Melbourne that would trouble them.

“Just five drives and a kick wasn’t going to be the go, so we had to try something different.

“But then you’ve got to strike a balance with it and not play lateral and sideways.

“I thought we were trying to get that balance right, but when you use the ball a bit more than you usually would you run the risk of making errors.

“The errors killed us a bit in the first half and gassed us out.

“I watched about 60 NRL games in my hotel room this week and Melbourne put 60 points on Souths one week, so that puts our game into perspective a little bit.

“You’ve got to make some linebreaks against Melbourne and we found that tough.” Kallum Watkins agreed. The Rhinos captain said: “We wanted to back ourselves, move them around and give ourselves some opportunities.

“But we shot ourselves in the foot a bit, gave them too many opportunities and they punished us.”

Kiwi prop Jesse Bromwich cancelled out Hall’s opener and Melbourne were 18-4 up at the break after tries to Brodie Croft and Suliasi Vunivalu. Nelson Asofa- Solomona, Felise Kaufusi, Will Chambers and Dale Finucane added further scores in the second half while the Storm stood firm at the other end of the field. McDermott added: “I thought their defence was outstanding – if you’re going to ask me why we really struggled then I’d say Melbourne’s defence. “It was suffocating and the more the game went on the better they got in ‘D’. “No matter what we tried, and we did come up with some challenging plays, they were just smothering. “I’ve got a healthy respect for their defence, it was awesome.”