Leeds Rhinos boss reveals key for winning play-offs, makes 'give us energy' appeal to fans v St Helens
Leeds Rhinos have a genuine chance of becoming champions this year, coach Brad Arthur reckons, but they have to be at their absolute best for three successive games.
Rhinos, who finished fourth in Betfred Super League, begin their play-off campaign at home to fifth-placed St Helens tomorrow (Saturday). The winners will travel to one of the top two next weekend and the Grand Final is at Old Trafford in two weeks’ time, on Saturday, October 11.
Leeds are near full-strength and have beaten all the other five play-off teams at least once this year, but also lost to four of them and Arthur believes the title will go to the side who “own the big moments”. Assessing Rhinos’ chances, he said: “We have fared really well against all the teams in and around the six, but in saying that, we’ve had to be at our best. I think every team would be thinking the same; if they are at their best, they are a chance of winning - a bounce of the ball, or a big moment, you have got to try and own as many of them as you can.”
The Leeds boss stressed: “Everyone is beating everyone, so it shows how even it is. You’ve had 27 weeks to slug it out, but now it comes down to knockout each week and you’ve just got to get up for that 80 minutes.
“The things that got you to the finals will be the things that win them. It is going to be pretty tight so you need to be strong defensively, find the big efforts under pressure and when you get an opportunity, you need to ice it. Doing the simple things really well will give you a good opportunity.
“We have got to be at our best for 80 minutes in this one game and then hope we make it one more after that and then another. We haven’t talked about do or die, I think everyone knows that, but we’ve done 27 weeks of tough slog to get here and we just have to do one more week. If we have to do it another week, great and another week…one more week is our mentality at the moment.”
Rhinos battled hard for 10 months to be involved in a play-off at AMT Headingley, for the first time since 2017 and Arthur insisted: “We’ve earned the right and we need to make the most of it. We have got to try and use that to our advantage.
“Especially if you are defending your tryline or you’ve got the ball, they [the home crowd] can give you that energy when you need it. All teams thrive off a bit of energy, whether after scoring points or a bit of crowd interaction.”
Saints won’t be daunted by the prospect, having won their last seven games against Leeds at Headingley in a run stretching back to 2017. That includes a 6-0 victory in July which was their third in four meetings with Rhinos this season.
Arthur said: “Probably if we were coming into the contest and we hadn’t won a game against them at all it might be a different story, but every team in the six has beaten each other at some stage and shown they can be competitive against each other. There’ll be a fair bit of luck that’ll go into it, like a bounce of the ball here and there, so you have got to try and make sure you make the luck on the back of opportunities you get. We know the style of footy they play, they try to drag you into an arm wrestle and a grind and they do a good job with it. The contests of late against them have been low scoring and tight, so when you do get your opportunities you have to make the most of them.”
Whatever happens, Arthur feels this season has been a “big improvement” after successive eighth-placed finishes. “We wanted to be better than we were last year and we certainly are,” he stated. “I think we have put some good foundations in on what sort of team we want to be. We are nowhere near the finished product; we are certainly right in this competition, but I’d like to think we will be better again next year.”