Leeds Rhinos boss identifies key weakness, reveals why improvement expected in new season

Arthur identified lack of conditioning as the reason Rhinos let the lead slip in a series of crucial encounters following his arrival at the club in July. The Australian was in charge for the final 10 games of 2024, winning half of them, as Leeds finished eighth in Betfred Super League for the second successive year, two points outside the top-six.

They led in three of those five defeats and looking ahead to the new season, which begins at home to Wakefield Trinity in five weeks’ time, Arthur stressed: “I want to make sure we can play a full 80 minutes, because I feel like we struggled to do that.” He said: “I am only talking about the 10 games I was involved in, I’m not going to talk about anything before that because I wasn’t here, but in those games we put ourselves in a position in all but one of them - against Wigan, when we started horribly and didn’t get off the bus that night.

“The other nine games, we put ourselves in a position where we could have and should have won all of them. I feel like lack of conditioning let us down and we couldn’t play a full 80 minutes.”

Rhinos resumed training in November and pre-season has given Arthur an opportunity to work on things he didn’t have time to address last term. He added: “When I arrived, in that 10 weeks it was hard to make a heap of changes.

“I just wanted to tweak a couple of things here or there, but having a pre-season and being around them five days a week, long days, getting them strong and fit and learning about how we want to play, that time has definitely helped.

“We’ve also done a fair bit with a couple of guys around the leadership of the team and a bit of accountability - the players actually owning more of the team and the standards. I can set the standards for them, but they have got to drive them and live them and own them. Time has been important, pre-seasons are so important to the young guys and even the senior players.”

Arthur isn’t making rash predictions for the new campaign, but insisted: “I’d like to think we are going to be better than we were in the last 10 weeks of last season. I have tried to implement some things with the players and the buy-in was good.

“I have sensed a gradual improvement in them, they have worked hard in pre-season and I feel like we are pretty strong and fit, but we have got to be able to get it done for 80 minutes each week. It’s that level of reliability that we can turn up and play a certain style of footy every week and do it week-in, week-out, which is the hard bit. But I will be disappointed if we are not better.”

Rhinos haven’t finished in the top four of Super League since they won the Grand Final from second in the table eight years ago and are aiming for a first play-offs appearance in three seasons. “Every team right now is sitting here thinking they are going to play finals [play-offs] and we’re no different,” the coach admitted. “We want to play finals and I’d like to believe we should be playing at the back end of the year when it’s really important.”