Kick options explained as Leeds Rhinos duo Ash Handley & Harry Newman reach milestones v Warrington Wolves

Captain Ash Handley is set to reach 200 Betfred Super League games as Harry Newman brings up a century in the competition. The game comes six days after Ryan Hall made his 500th career appearance in the 12-10 home win over Wigan Warriors and is the 5,000th Super League fixture since summer rugby began 29 years ago.

“The club’s proud we’ve got one guy reaching 200 games and another reaching his 100th and they’ve played all their football here, which is great,” Arthur said. “Both those guys are playing really good football for us. We’d like to get them some more quality ball and that will come as we get on top of exactly the style we are trying to play.”

Arthur feels the pair’s contribution to the team is often overlooked and he revealed they have been encouraged to adopt a new way of playing this season. “There’s a lot of work they do in games that isn’t credited or appreciated, but it is by the team,” he stressed.

“They are doing a lot of work on effort areas, which is what we’ve challenged them on. There’s been a lot of changes to their game around that - their involvements and effort areas off the ball, which make a big difference to the rest of the team.

“We’ve been starting in really good field position because of a lot of the work those two have been doing. They are also doing a lot of work on providing kick options for the team, so on the last tackle they give us more options.

“They have struck up a reasonable combination and come up with some big plays at big times for us on the back of their kick. That gives us a bit more flexibility and more options on the last tackle, makes us a bit more dangerous whether we are kicking or going to run.”

Last Saturday’s win was Rhinos’ most physical and intense game of the season so far and Arthur admitted it is “a challenge”, to back that up. But he insisted: “If you want to play in the last game of the year, there’s going to be a lot of intensity in the games leading up to it, so it is good practice for us.

“If you want to be in the big games at the end of the year, you’ve got to be able to do it throughout the season. That’s the challenge for us and I’m sure it’s the same for Warrington who are coming off a high intensity game against Saints last week. I hope it’s as intense again, that’s what both teams would want.”

Leeds have struggled to back up good performances in recent seasons and Arthur reckons “sticking to the things that work for us” is the key to a second successive win this evening. “The players know what we want to do and it’s not what we are doing at the moment, it’s how we do it sometimes - we do a lot of good things, then we go away from it,” he said.

“The way we started the first half last week was really good, then we went out in the second half and tried to do it a different way. How we did it was totally different, I think we had three errors in that first 10 minutes. It’s just about sticking to what works for us and what we want to be able to do and being able to do it for longer periods.”

After a shaky start to the year, Warrington bounced back to form with a 14-12 victory at St Helens last Friday, when half-back Marc Sneyd made his debut. “Their last performance was really good,” Arthur reflected. “Sneyd coming into their team has made a difference for them, he gives them more kick threat and more options in attack. They are a powerful forward pack so the challenge for our forwards is we had to deal with Saints, then Wigan and now we’ve got to deal with Warrington, so that’s a really good challenge physically for our middle.”