If people didn't realise the extent of the issues at Headingley, they do now.
If any of the candidates in the running for the Leeds Rhinos job watched their Challenge Cup defeat to Castleford Tigers, you couldn't blame them for ringing Gary Hetherington and backing out during the half-time break. An utterly diabolical first-half performance was, for now at least, rock bottom.
It was a performance that encapsulated everything wrong with this Leeds Rhinos squad at present. They are fragile, they look frightened and they have no resilience. The message from the squad in the days following Richard Agar's departure was that their jobs and their roles had been made simpler under Jamie Jones-Buchanan.
Read more: Leeds Rhinos player ratings after disastrous display against Castleford Tigers
It doesn't get much simpler than making tackles but the majority were incapable of doing that properly in an utterly horrid 40 minutes. Passing the ball to a teammate is another fairly simple request but many seemed to struggle with that too. Asking kickers to kick well is another very basic instruction but seven tackle sets were the norm.
If there was a narrative Leeds Rhinos players were trying to portray in the aftermath of Agar's exit, they didn't do a good job of proving to anyone that they weren't part of the problem.
As results worsened the pressure naturally grew on Agar. The minimum expectation was that the Rhinos squad would provide some form of response to his exit. Their response, if that is what you want to call it, was to play even worse.
When a coach leaves, everyone associated has to take stock and reflect on where they could have been better. The Rhinos players have, in truth, got away with it fairly lightly, with Agar himself copping most of the flak. With the coach now gone there is no hiding place. Jamie Jones-Buchanan isn't going to provide it either. His post-match comments provided no defence of the squad but instead a challenge for them to show some characteristics that suggest they're up for the fight.
It's clear that there is a confidence issue at Headingley, a natural consequence of poor form. But there's also a lack of character and resilience, and all the warning signs strike you in the face. When the going gets tough, they crumble. When they concede a try, there are very few trying to rally the troops. Once things start to go wrong, things quickly become catastrophically wrong. They capitulated in the final quarter against Salford and they caved in during the last ten minutes of the first-half against Castleford.
And yes, they came out and played something like in the second-half, but any team can play well when the game is over and the pressure is off. That's the sign of a side playing scared.
In the coming weeks, all the talk will be around the next head coach. But the focus and the scrutiny needs to be aimed directly at the players. It is they who have not performed, it is they who have been unable to respond. At some point they, individually and collectively, need to take some accountability.
Do they have the leaders in the group to challenge teammates and drive standards? The club has had six captains in four years, which perhaps says more about Leeds' long-term planning than anything else, but it's not a healthy situation either way.
Do they have the drive to not only fix things up but take Leeds back to the next level? Perhaps, like Agar, some of these players have ran their race at Headingley.
But whatever the issue, whatever the problem, this squad has nothing to fall back on now. They are primarily responsible for getting the club out of this mess.
