Leeds Rhinos head coach Brian McDermott believes his side must be more skilled in 2015 – after admitting their statistics from 2014 didn’t match up to the rest of the division at all well.
The Rhinos finished a disappointing sixth on the Super League ladder, before crashing out in week one of the play-offs to Catalans Dragons. And McDermott says that whilst the amount his team passed the ball accounts for a lot of their mistakes last year, it doesn’t completely mask the fact that they have to tighten themselves up when it comes to planning for the forthcoming season.
“When you look at the comp’ stats, we didn’t stack up that well compared to the rest. We need to be more skilled,” McDermott told the Yorkshire Evening Post.
“Some of that is what you’d call ‘lack of skill’ but we also came up with too many unrealistic passes.
“Most coaches want to eradicate all errors out of their game but I don’t think you can and if you pass the ball a lot you’re going to make some errors.
“One of the stats reads we passed the ball more than any other team last year so, therefore, by that rationale we’re going to make a few more mistakes than most. But that still doesn’t account for some we made. That has to be tightened up.”