Discipline let Dewsbury down against Leigh, says Neil Kelly

Dewsbury coach Neil Kelly said their discipline wasn’t good enough in their heavy defeat at Leigh.

The Rams were 18-0 down at the break and had half-back Gareth Moore and forward Chris Annakin sin-binned in the second half for fighting and a professional foul respectively.

Leigh ended up 36-0 victors on Sunday afternoon and Kelly admitted discipline was an issue for Dewsbury.

Speaking after the game, he said: “We faced a full-time side and if you fall foul of the referee and give away control of the collision, teams like Leigh will punish you.

“I’m not disgruntled or upset though. It looks as though we’ve been punished on the scoreboard but I would imagine if you spoke to the Leigh players, they will probably say they had been in a tough game.

“Our discipline let us down. I don’t know if all the decisions were justifiable but they are decisions all the same. It was a bit of a rearguard action in the second half, we had players picking up injuries and we showed tremendous spirit in the second period because I thought it could have been a lot worse than 36-0. Overall, I’m really positive about our efforts.

“Some players accounted for themselves really well, but we can’t escape the score. The only way we can justify a scoreline like that is if we learn lessons and we go away, lick our wounds, do the work we need to do during the week and come back stronger.”

Kelly thinks the difference between eighth-placed Leigh being a full-time outfit and fifth-placed Dewsbury being part-time was clear to see in the game.

He added: “It takes its toll on part-time players when you are playing full-time teams.

“It might look a bit ridiculous now, but we went to Leigh with high hopes but you need to compete, not give penalties away and do the right thing in the collision and Leigh have those attributes habitually while we only have them sporadically.

“We need to get them kind of attributes into our habitual game rather than sporadic game.”