Richard Agar admits he’s feeling the heat at Leeds Rhinos

Richard Agar admits he’s feeling the heat after Leeds Rhinos’ awful start to the season continued with a 26-12 defeat at Salford. 

Leeds led 12-8 but had no answer to a stylish Salford fightback which handed the Rhinos a fifth defeat in six games. 

And a visibly dejected Agar told Love Rugby League that performances have just not been good enough for a proud club like Leeds, and he accepts that pressure will mount on his own position unless he’s able to find immediate answers.

“We are the story at the moment, the coach is under pressure,” he told me, before refusing to be drawn on his own position.

“George has tried to do it here, Jenna (Brooks, Sky Sports) out there, wanting me to come out with sweeping statements,” he told the post-match press conference.

“I felt we’d had a good week and we don’t look like the team I know we can be or the team that I’m seeing in preparation for the game. 

“I’m an experienced coach and the first place I will always look is myself. Always in these situations the heat turns on the coach and I get it.”

Richard Agar backing players to turn fortunes around

While acknowledging unrest amongst supporters and increasing pressure on his own shoulders, Agar remains steadfast in backing his players to turn things around.

He added: “I don’t think wholesale changes to the team is quite the answer. We need more collectively and individually. Some decision-making in that game just leaves us scratching our heads as coaches why we are making decisions like that. We just capitulated in the last 10 minutes. 

“We haven’t had our first choice side out and clearly we have some important players missing.  But for me the manner that we have fallen apart is obviously concerning. 

“We have had no-shows at Wigan and Hull which is really concerning for us. I felt that we had a squad at the start of the year that could probably cope a lot better than this. 

“I think we were exactly the same record at this point last year and we ended up in the penultimate game of the year. But we can’t keep saying that. We have to give a lot of thought to where we are at this moment in time.”

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