Rohan Smith will spend the international break trying to get to the root cause of Leeds Rhinos' slow starts after they were blown away in an early blitz during their defeat to Leigh Leopards.
Smith's side was 16-0 down in 18 minutes as his team once again failed to come out of the blocks early, a persisting problem that has been an issue for large parts of his first 12 months at the club. The issue has particularly reared its head this year. The Rhinos have only been leading at half-time twice this season in their opening ten games and have been trailing by ten points or more on four occasions.
While Leeds have performed better in the latter stages of games, the Rhinos chief has been left concerned by his side's inability to get on the front foot early.
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"Tonight was the first one I remember where there were the points straight away where some other games it's been a sluggish start," he said. "It's something I'm going to have to spend the next couple of weeks trying to find some solutions as to why.
"They executed some plays really well so it can't go without credit there, but they were also plays we were prepared for."
He continued: "It typifies some games so far, some other games where we've performed really well. For the majority of that game we've at least had a fair chunk of momentum, we've just lacked execution, I think that was the most crucial thing aside from a sluggish start and some defensive moments that cost us the points."
Smith was also disappointed with his side's efforts with the ball. "We just didn't execute," he said. Our execution wasn't there, a bit of patience perhaps. It was too lateral, for my liking."
Pushed further, he added: "The bulk of the times we've got ourselves into trouble has been an over-willingness to play out of the back. When we don't do that we trouble teams. Some of it was lack of patience, some was play selection, but I felt we had an opportunity to get our nose between people, even down on their try line."
The new episode of House of League is out now! Matthew Shaw is joined by Paul Cooke and Joe Appleyard to discuss the season so far and grade every club's campaign.
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