Leeds Rhinos boss says 'that's why we brought him here' as Maika Sivo makes 2-try debut v York Knights
It was an impressive start, but Leeds Rhinos boss Brad Arthur reckons there’s much more to come from try-scoring sensation Maika Sivo.
The Fijian international, who touched down 104 times in 115 NRL appearances before joining Leeds ahead of the 2025 season, bagged a brace of tries in his long-awaited debut as Rhinos beat York Knights 48-14 at AMT Headingley. It was Sivo’s first game since an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January last year and he was an instant hit with Rhinos’ fans.
But Arthur - who coached him at Parramatta Eels - insisted: “His best footy is probably five-10 weeks away, I reckon.” The team boss said: “He was nervous, I have coached him for pretty much his whole career and I haven’t seen him like that. It was good, it shows how important the game was to him and how much he cared.
“He has worked really hard to lose some weight and be ready for the game. He was tired, he was out on his feet - he has got way more to give, which is great, but that first try shows you why we brought him here because he had a fair bit of work to do there. That’s what he can do, he can turn those half-chances or 25 per cent chances into tries and in big games that’s what you need.”
Reflecting on Rhinos’ first Betfred Super League win of 2026, Arthur had mixed emotions. “I was really happy with 75 minutes of it,” he said. “I wanted us to be more ruthless with five minutes to go. There was a 12-point swing there, we should have been scoring under the posts, but instead our last two sets of the game we turned it over on tackle one and tackle two and we conceded a soft try.
“The other part of it is, our defence this year is not where it needs to be. The tries we’ve had scored against us haven’t been good enough. We are not making them work hard enough for the points against us at the minute.
“Maybe that is a bit of getting used to the speed of the game and the rules, but it’s not of the standard we are accepting at the moment. Anyway, it is round two and gives us something to work on, but I was really happy with our start, which was professional and I was happy with our whole approach to it.
“We got some good points and kept chasing the game the way we wanted to. We were physical and I thought our effort was really good. We conceded a line-break and our chase-back was really good, but a couple of sets later we conceded a soft try on our line. But you’ve got to have something to work on early in the piece, don’t you?”