Leeds Rhinos confident of upsetting odds in Women's Super League Grand Final

The showdown with York City Knights at St Helens (3.30pm) is Rhinos’ fourth successive title decider following their win over Castleford Tigers in 2019 and losses to Wigan Warriors the previous year and St Helens last season.

Rhinos finished third on the table, but pulled off a stunning semi-final win over Saints to set up the meeting with league leaders York.

York won both this season’s league encounters, but Rhinos coach Lois Forsell is confident of putting lessons learned from those defeats into practice this weekend.

“Whenever you lose you are always learning,” she said. “The girls have massively learned from it and we know what they are going to come at us with.

“In the first game we lost to them we had Courtney [Winfield-Hill, Rhinos’ captain] ruled out with Covid and that was a tough day in the office.

“We were just disappointing when we played them at Headingley and the girls know what , it was a disappointing day and performance.

“It is two losses against them, but we aren’t going to read too much into that. We just know we need to be a lot better.”

The final will be the third televised live by Sky Sports and a thrilling game in front of a big crowd would set the scene for November’s World Cup.

Forsell said: “If you look at 2017, the last World Cup, we were playing a Grand Final at Manchester Regional Arena and the Challenge Cup final was at Heworth.

“Fast forward to this World Cup and we are playing at Elland Road and the Challenge Cup final will be at Wembley next year, the women’s game is live on Sky Sports and the BBC, the visibility and awareness of the game is massive.

“Participation at the grass roots has risen because there’s so much more accessibility and visibility.

“Interest in the game has grown because people can tune in a lot more easily so the growth is excellent and hopefully going into the World Cup we can really capitalise on that.”

Forsell is confident the women’s game will continue to expand to the point where players are paid. She added: “I know clubs are looking at how they can improve their programs and provide better opportunities in terms of making the game more professional.

“We are now looking after them a lot better and they’ve got a lot more in place than the game has ever seen.

“I think the RFL and clubs have all looked at how we can make the game better in terms of player welfare, now it’s looking at how can we mitigate the cost to players, in terms of expenses and things like that, or how can we look at paying contracts so you can recruit and retain players.

“Then you can get more out of them, you can ask them to train more if they are on some kind of contract.

“We’ve seen that in rugby union and football, it’s naturally the way you have to go in terms of improving the product and raising standards, but it’s not going to happen overnight. It has to have a strategic plan behind it.”