No cause for concern: Leeds Rhinos on track despite Hull KR loss says Rhyse Martin

Martin insists he won’t lose sleep over last Sunday’s 26-4 defeat at Hull KR, which brought the curtain down on Leeds’ pre-season campaign,

Rhinos trailed 16-0 at half-time and were outscored by five tries to one, despite fielding their strongest squad since preparations began last November.

It was their third defeat in four pre-season games, following losses to Super League rivals Wakefield Trinity and Leigh Leopards and a win over Championship side Bradford Bulls.

Martin accepted there are things to work on over the next nine days, but pledged what happened at Craven Park isn’t cause for concern ahead of Rhinos’ Betfred Super League opener at Warrington Wolves a week on Thursday.

“Definitely not,” he said. “We have done some really good things this pre-season and I think that was probably the first time we’ve had a pretty solid team out there.

“The focus is round one, two, three and four - there’s no points from winning all your games in these trials.

“What we have shown is we’ve got a good group of young kids coming through and they all got a fair crack in these games.

“I think it’s exciting for the club to see what lies ahead with the youth and the young guys coming through.”

Martin admitted Rhinos went into the Hull KR fixture without a game plan. He said: “It’s ‘go work on what we’ve been doing at training’.

“When we get to week one we will nail down a game plan with what we want to try and do and what we want to execute throughout the game.

“[Last Sunday] we were just playing footy, it didn’t stick, but it’s definitely not an indication of what we are capable of.

“Everyone’s quite fit, with the amount of defence we did everyone got through a fair amount of work which is good, it’s what you want in these games. At the moment everyone’s healthy and that’s what matters.”

Rhinos made a series of errors, including at least four on the first tackle and Martin vowed they will learn from what went wrong last weekend.

He stressed: “There’s no point winning all these [pre-season] games and thinking you are ahead of where you actually are.

“There’s things we clearly need to work on and that’s good for us because we get an opportunity to go back to training this week and do that.

“I am looking forward to round one. I have still got 100 per cent confidence in what we can achieve this season.

“It [last weekend’s game] doesn’t change our focus or our goals. It has been a good three or four months of pre-season.”

Martin wasn’t selected for Rhinos’ first two trial games, but featured against both Bradford and Hull KR.

He reckons playing matches is an essential part of pre-season, but admitted he will be glad to get into the week-in, week-out grind of Super League.

“It is exciting,” he said. “I think the competition is looking very strong. Hull KR have got a great side and they are going to be very competitive, like they were last year.

“Warrington have done well with their recruitment and they are looking strong, so who knows?

“I think it’s looking like it’s going to be a good year and we can’t wait to get it under way.”

Martin has welcomed new disciplinary rules which have come into force in 2023. He was suspended twice for minor, grade A offences towards the end of last season, but the changes mean neither would lead to a ban this term.

Only offences graded C and above will now lead to an automatic suspension and the second-rower said: “Hopefully everyone has an exciting year and it’s not like last year when everyone was getting suspended left, right and centre.

“Hopefully that’s sorted out a little bit and we can keep the best teams on the field every week and make it exciting for everyone. I am looking forward to it.”