Memories galore as Leeds Rhinos reach Super League milestone – Peter Smith

When the final whistle blows, that will add up to 56,000 minutes, or very nearly 39 days. So if you were to watch a full recording of every Rhinos Super League match, starting today, you’d finish on July 18.

According to stats guru Andrew Dalton, who is a mine of this sort of information, Leeds have won 431 of their regular-season Super League games so far, with 18 draws and 250 defeats. They have scored 19,272 points and conceded 14,435.

That does not include Challenge Cup or play-off ties, World Club competitions, or Leeds’ two campaigns in the middle-eights. In total in the summer era, which began 26 years ago, Rhinos’ record is played 868, won 543, drawn 18 and lost 306.

James Donaldson’s try against Warrington Wolves last week took Rhinos past 25,000 points in summer rugby and they are now on 25,022, with 18,110 conceded.

Statistics like that don’t mean a lot in themselves, but there have been some wonderful moments – as well as a few nobody would want to be reminded of – since the first of those 700 Super League matches kicked off, at home to Warrington Wolves on March 31, 1996.

Kevin Iro scored Leeds’ first try in the competition, but they were beaten 22-18 and ended that season third from bottom in the table, above only Workington Town and Paris St Germain.

At the time, Leeds – they didn’t become Rhinos until the following year – were teetering on the brink financially, after years of splashing the cash unsuccessfully in a failed bid to match Wigan, and Headingley’s future was in doubt.

Thankfully, the takeover by Paul Caddick and Gary Hetherington saved the stadium and the club.

Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s plans to move to a new site in Wakefield were abandoned and, over the years since, both sides of the Headingley Stadium complex have been transformed.

The success Rhinos have enjoyed on the field has been even more spectacular: eight Super League titles, the Challenge Cup four times, top spot in the table and world champions three times.

Even amid the disappointment of some difficult recent years, Rhinos have still managed to pick up a trophy or two.

Sports is cyclical and Rhinos have generally been on a downward curve since winning the treble in 2015, but perhaps that is about to change with a young, ambitious coach at the helm and the best crop of young players since the turn of the century beginning to make their mark. If Morgan Gannon, Jack Sinfield, Jarrod O’Connor and Max Simpson are half as successful as the previous generation, the likes of Kevin Sinfield, Rob Burrow, Danny McGuire and Jamie Jones-Buchanan, fans at the next 700 games will have a lot to look forward to.

There’s no guarantee, of course, but Leeds, as a club, are in a far healthier state than 26 years ago, whatever anyone might feel about the slump since 2015.

Nobody can predict what the next 700 matches will bring. Maybe in 26 years’ time Leeds will be playing Leicester in some sort of hybrid version of the game.

Let’s hope not, but Super League hasn’t developed the way its backers hoped for when the first whistle was blown, in Paris of all places, and the future is as uncertain now as it was all those years ago.

Fans old enough to remember Super League will have their own favourite matches, but probably everyone lucky enough to be there would pick Ryan Hall’s last-gasp try against Huddersfield seven years ago as Rhinos’ single greatest Super League moment.

For what it’s worth, this writer would rate the team of 2005 as Leeds’ best in Super League.

Though they ended the year without a domestic trophy, for the first half of that season, Rhinos were virtually unstoppable.

Can the next 700 games possibly produce anything nearly as good? It will be fun to find out.