HULL FC head coach Tony Smith has given his thoughts on the Black and Whites’ defeat to Leigh Leopards yesterday afternoon.
Leigh ran into a quick 16-0 lead and dominated the majority of the contest, and tries from Davy Litten, Jake Clifford and Liam Sutcliffe weren’t enough to get Hull over the line as Smith’s men slipped to their fourth win in a row.
Reacting after the game, Smith told the Hull FC website: “It’s disappointing and there’s a disappointment as well. It took us way too long to build anything there. We’ve got to stop hurting ourselves and allowing the opposition to hurt us before we start to do something about it.
“For us to have to look for a reaction rather than go and be the inflictor of the pain, I mentioned it throughout the week, we need to be the ones on the front foot and those first ten minutes weren’t something that we are proud of. It went on for more than ten minutes but the score blow out in those initial ten minutes.
“When you consider just how average we were in that part of the game, we actually came back and gave ourselves a chance. We’ve got to stop and don’t allow the pain to be inflicted first before we try and scramble our way back in. It wasn’t good enough today, and our discipline was poor today in all sorts of ways.”
Smith added that as head coach, he takes responsibility for the result, but added that his side need to discover some all-round toughness.
“I am their coach and I am responsible for it. We have to crack the whip. I have to get tougher. I have to get them tougher. We’ve just got to get tougher as a club, me as a coach, them as players – we’ve got to get tougher.
“We’ve got to make better decisions, get tougher with our defensive efforts, and start to hurt the opposition instead of ourselves. It’s self-inflicted. I’m not excluding myself from the performance. I’m responsible for them each and every week. I’ve got to find the right 17 for each week and make those decisions which I’m happy to do. Sometimes it means I’ve got to change the team, sometimes I have a choice in that and sometimes I don’t.”
Singling out the deficiencies in his side’s performances of late, he added: “Our starts, our disciplIne, our defence, contact, managing the ruck speed, both ours and theirs (the opponents), all of those things, we’ve got to toughen up.
“We’re not competing in those areas often enough. While we’re not doing that we’re going to fall behind. We gifted our opponents a great start and some confidence in their game.
“Finally, when we did start to find a bit and get some contact and defend as we’d like to, I don’t think we ever hit the straps like we did last week, we’re playing play catch up and trying to desperately go and win a game rather than being in control and making good decisions. We’ve put ourselves in those areas too much already this season.”
