Leeds Rhinos hungry for Womens' Challenge Cup and Super League success after season of near-misses

Rhinos, who finished third on the 2023 table, were runners-up to St Helens in the first Betfred Women’s Challenge Cup final played at Wembley and also against York Valkyrie in the Super League title decider. Reaching both showpieces was an impressive achievement for a team who lost two key players, Fran Goldthorp and Georgia Roche, to the NRL women’s competition on the eve of the season, with another, Georgia Hale, joining them a few games into the campaign.

But Forsell isn’t prepared to settle for second-best and is desperate to win something this year. “No one remembers the runners-up,” she said. “Rightly so because you go there to win and we didn’t win last year.

“I think everyone in the squad is hungry to make sure we do get some silverware this year. We just want to get going, we won’t be looking at trophies at the start, we’ll just take it round by round and try to improve on the previous week.”

Sunday’s opening Challenge Cup group game away to Leigh Leopards marks the end of what Forsell said has been a “good pre-season” for Rhinos. She reflected: “We’ve got some new faces so it has been good to get them gelling, get some combinations going and get to know each other a bit better.

“The girls have worked really hard, there’s been loads of positives and I can see definite progress from when we first started to where we are now. The start of the season seems to have been a long time coming and we are ready to get into games now. The players are itching to get out there and we’re looking forward to Sunday.”

Forsell is “excited” about what Leeds’ five off-season recruits, led by England and former St Helens star Shona Hoyle, will bring. She said: “We’ve brought Shona in to add to our pack and Grace Field, from York, is another forward who’ll add to us in the middle.

“Ella Donnelly has come across from the Army rugby league team. She’s still very new on her Super League journey, but is very fit, fast, strong and very coachable so it will be exciting to see how she goes this year. In the backs we’ve brought in Liv Whitehead from York who will strengthen our outside-backs and Beth MacMillan, who is a full-back from Bradford.

“Another one to mention is Evie Cousins, who was with us last year, but didn’t play a game. She played in the under-19s’ first game of the season and broke an ankle. It was quite a tough one, she had an operation and she was sidelined for the whole year. She will take to the field this year and that’s really exciting. She has a lot of potential and I think she’ll have a really good career in Super League.

“We’ve also got people like Bella Sykes who didn’t start last year with us, but came in during the season. Hopefully we will have a bit more of a settled start to the season and we can keep people healthy and happy and keep improving week on week.”

England centre Caitlin Beevers and number nine Keara Bennett both had surgery in the off-season and won’t be available for the Challenge Cup group games.”Keara will be back around April and Caitlin in June,” Forsell confirmed.

“They needed to get their injuries sorted. They are looking forward to getting back, but I think if there was a time to not have them, this is the time. We will finish the season with them.”

Forward Shannon Lacey, who has not played since suffering a badly broken leg in Rhinos’ 2022 Grand Final win against York, remains part of the squad, but is unlikely to be available until late in the campaign.

Rhinos haven’t had a warm-up match and - while they are determined to go all the way to Wembley - will use their Challenge Cup group games as preparation for the Super League opener against Huddersfield Giants at AMT Headingley on Friday, April 19.

After this weekend’s visit to Leigh, Rhinos are at Hull KR on March 24 and play host to Huddersfield on Sunday, April 8. The Cup quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played over the following two weekends, leading into the start of the league competition.

Rhinos will be hot favourites to top their Challenge Cup group, but Forsell insisted she expects a tough opener at Leigh, who were runners-up in the Super League second tier Grand Final last season. “We played Leigh last year and they carried hard and challenged us for a good 25-30 minutes,” the Rhinos coach recalled.

“We know it is going to be a tough game. They’ve had two practice games, they are at home and they’ll probably be a bit more used to the conditions than us, because we haven’t had a warm-up game and we train on a 3g. We know we’ve got to put a good performance in if we want to come away with the result.”