Rudderless Rhinos are run ragged

JAMIE JONES-BUCHANAN looked on in horror as Leeds’ week went from bad to worse.

The playing legend desperately needed a win to boost morale after coach Richard Agar walked away.

Instead he got a first-half disaster which ultimately doomed their chances of progressing to the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup.

The interim coach (right) said: “Our attitude, application and discipline is just not good enough.

“It hurts me as a fan, as someone who grew up in Leeds and as a past player but now we have got a challenge. We have got a puzzle to solve and it’s a big one.

“We have loads of work to do. The players have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

Leeds’ faults – and there were way too many of them – should take nothing away from Castleford’s impressive display.

Like the Rhinos, they came into the tie on the back of five defeats from six games and urgently needed a good performance.

They delivered, to book a quarter-final tie with Hull

KR, to the delight of coach Lee Radford who grew up as a Rovers fan and lives in the area.

He said: “It’s a fantastic tie – it’s in my back garden! I thought the way we front-loaded that game was fantastic.

“I felt our attack has been coming over the last couple of weeks and people are buying into how we wanted to play.

“Defensively we did a really good job. There were a couple of lapses in the second half but I thought overall we did really well.”

Leeds’ defence was shocking in the first half, with half-backs Aidan Sezer and Blake Austin the main culprits.

The two senior players were at fault in all five of the Tigers’ tries before the break – and their poor defence seemed to spread anxiety throughout the hosts.

Cheap penalties were given away far too often and Castleford ran riot, kicking off with an early try from Jake Trueman.

Then centre Jake Mamo took advantage of some poor positioning by Sezer, cutting through the line embarrassingly easily, before a Sezer mistake paved the way for a third try from Gareth O’Brien.

Brad Dwyer was sin-binned for tripping Kenny Edwards and the giant Cas man then rubbed in the misery by putting Jordan Turner over for another try, and Leeds conceded one more from George Lawler before the break came.

Jones-Buchanan needed the halftime talk of his life and he got some response with two tries from Rhyse Martin and one from Liam Sutcliffe.

But Cas were never in danger and eased home with two further scores from Greg Eden.

LeedS: Tries: Martin (2), Sutcliffe

Goals: Martin (2) caStLeFord: Tries: Trueman, Mamo, O’Brien, Turner, Lawler, Eden (2)

Goals: O’Brien (6)