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Kelly reacts to Sheffield defeat

Head coach Neil Kelly provided the media with his thoughts following the defeat to Sheffield Eagles last Sunday.

The Rams lost 30-28 on the day in what was a close encounter.

He said on the defeat: “When I look back at some of the tries we conceded I thought they were too soft. We talked about potentially winning this game, and we scored 28 points possibly 30 if we had kicked that last goal. We did the same at Swinton and Barrow.

“If you don’t tackle you don’t win games and we didn’t tackle. I was disappointed with the referee’s performance. When you are tackling and conceding the points we are it’s hard to point the finger at the ref.

“I thought the situation in which they scored their last try, we’ve seen a lot of play acting in the World Cup with Neymar. I was a little bit suspicious he was playing for Sheffield.

“Going into half time it was the same thing. If we had got hold of their sets early on, we wouldn’t have been in a position where we would have conceded so many repeat sets.

“Just because we beat Barrow last week doesn’t give us the right to beat Sheffield. You have to earn that right to beat them. You have to do the little things within a game. We can all look at the league table and say we’d like to beat Sheffield but we can easily look at it and say they want to beat us.

“it’s those little things that makes a difference and when you have to do them, you have to do them, and when you do them you have to have pride in the fact you are doing them. I just think sometimes we are coming up short when it’s our turn to do it. That leads to interception tries and tap and dive tries. This is why people need to work on defence. If it was the first time I’d be disappointed but it isn’t the first time.

“We were only behind in the game because we weren’t doing the right things in defence. We have left ourselves relying on our attack to do something and the ref awarding us a couple of penalties. We are only in that situation because ase we have conceded tries.”