McDermott content as Leeds progress

Brian McDermott was happy to see Leeds reach the last eight of the Challenge Cup on Sunday, but admitted his team will need to step up their game as the competition progresses.

Joel Moon grabbed a hat-trick as the Rhinos defeated League 1 side Barrow 72-10 to set up a quarter-final tie against Featherstone.

“We didn’t do a good enough job against Doncaster in a similar situation a couple of weeks ago (in round five) when they ended up having a much better second half than we did, so to follow through and finish it off today and score 72 points is pleasing,” said McDermott.

“There were some issues with ball security but we won’t focus on that. We didn’t come out with any injuries. Tom Briscoe came off with a twisted knee and Danny McGuire got a tight quad but nothing sinister.

“Once you’ve made it extremely unlikely that you are going to lose the game, the next thing is to ensure that you stay injury free.

“Some of the tries we scored were top drawer but, being respectful to Barrow, I don’t think we’ll be able to do that against Super League teams.

“If they start waving the ball about like that against Super League opposition they will hurt us, so we have to manage that right.

“Featherstone are a good team. They will be pushing for top four come the ‘Middle Eights’ and I’m sure they will be pushing for Super League status, so we’ll pay them a fair amount of respect.”