Leeds Rhinos boss provides Harry Newman fitness update, hails 'physicality' in 64-6 win at Castleford Tigers

Centre Harry Newman, who scored the first of Rhinos’ 11 tries, was taken off in the second half after a knock and Arthur said: “It was a knee on knee clash and it started to stiffen up. We’ve got a short turnaround into Hull KR on Thursday so we thought we’d take him off for the last 15 minutes. He’ll be okay for Thursday.”

Full-back Lachie Miller, Leeds’ second scorer, was also given a rest. Arthur explained: “He had a really strong 60 minutes so it was to give him a rest and look after him a bit and get some game time into some of the other guys.”

Leeds’ biggest victory of the season came despite injuries reducing them to only two props in their matchday 17. Eighteen-year-old Presley Cassell played out of position in the front-row and marked his full debut with a try, while forward Ben Littlewood came off the bench for a second senior appearance.

“I was very happy with our intent physically,” Arthur said. “We had a lot of physicality sitting on the sideline and the guys out there made sure we had plenty of purpose about what we were doing, so I was really pleased with that. Sometimes it’s hard to continue that on for 80 minutes, but I felt like we still had that same level of physicality at the end of the game. That’s what pleased me the most.”

Rhinos played some outstanding attacking rugby and Arthur insisted: “I’m open to that style of footy as long as we’ve earned the right and worked hard. That’s on the back of the physicality. It gives you the opportunity and a bit more time and space. There’s plenty of that [freeflowing rugby] in these guys. I don’t want to coach that out of them because it’s certainly a point of difference for us.”

Arthur felt rookies Cassell and Littlewood “handled themselves really well”. He added: “Presley did a really good job at the start. He focused on keeping it simple and carrying the ball hard and going after the collision part of it. But the other guys around him led the way - Keenan [Palasia] led from the front, both back-rowers were nice and strong and Kal [Watkins] carried nice and hard. In the first 10 minutes, their first three or four kicks, we forced them to kick from inside the 30-metre line, so I was pretty happy with that.”

It was an overwhelmingly positive afternoon, but Arthur admitted Tigers’ late try took some of the gloss off the win as far as his players were concerned. Castleford had a try disallowed by video referee Marcus Griffiths in the opening quarter, but didn’t threaten again until Jenson Windley took advantage of an error to cross three minutes from time.

“The boys are a bit disappointed to let a try in at the end, but at least it gives us something to learn from,” Arthur said. “We shouldn’t have been camped on our tryline from the kick-off set, number one, but number two, we’ve got to be better than that. We can’t give up soft tries straight through our defensive line.”