LEEDS RHINOS boss Brad Arthur is liking what he’s seeing from his upwardly-mobile team – but says “dumb things” are still holding them back.
His side moved into Super League’s top four with a pulsating 14-22 victory at third-placed Leigh Leopards.
Arthur said: “The character and the fight has been there for 21 weeks and that’s the most impressive thing for me at the moment.
“That shows you that the players really care. They have the buy-in for the club.
“We haven’t nailed our footy all the time. That’s a bit of a work-on, but I thought for the majority of the game, our footy was really good.
“If we could just take out the five or six red-zone errors on tackle one, we’re not doing a lot wrong outside of that.
“We’re gifting cheap field position through some dumb things at times. If we can just get some dumbness out of the performance, we should be okay.
“They’re willing to back each other through their effort and their actions and their defence.
“There are a lot of positive signs and the good thing about it is there’s still plenty for us to work on, which keeps them nice and level and doesn’t let their egos get ahead of themselves.
“We’ve had a lot of big games in the last ten weeks. We’ve lost our fair share of games, but all our losing margins have been minimal and we’ve been right in them.
“With 30 seconds (left in the) last game, we got beat (by Wakefield Trinity). This week we managed to hang on and then kick away and score a try. We’re learning as we go.”
On the excellent performance of fullback Lachlan Miller, Arthur added: “Lockie’s got a lot of talent and ability that is natural and we haven’t coached into him or previous coaches haven’t coached into him.
“We’ve been working with him on controlling his emotions, because he’s so caring and he wants to win and he’s so hungry to help his team-mates.
“Sometimes his emotions get ahead of him, take control of his thoughts and he gets a little bit loose at times, but he’s working so hard on it. He’s a really good player.”