Leeds Rhinos introduce major change for new season as boss outlines 'big moments' plan
Boss Brad Arthur has made a major change to Leeds Rhinos’ preparation for games this year.
The traditional captain’s run – a light training session on the eve of a match – has been scrapped and the players will instead have the day off. Arthur told The Yorkshire Evening Post that will allow the team to do more intense and focused training earlier in the week.
“It’s about our decision-making at big moments,” he explained. “At captain’s run you are just going through the motions and doing a bit of revision on your game plan. There’s nothing of much intensity with it and not much of it is opposed, where you are making decisions. I just feel we can get more training sessions where we are actually doing things against each other and we’ve got to make decisions under fatigue or a little bit of pressure.”
Rhinos, who kick off their Betfred Challenge Cup campaign at Widnes Vikings tomorrow (Saturday), have now completed their second pre-season under Arthur. The former Parramatta Eels boss, who joined them in July, 2024, feels his team have made progress, but let themselves down at key points in some games last year.
He added: “We have got a pretty experienced group, I have been here 18 months and they know exactly how we want to play. They are pretty good across all our systems and our principles and our mentality around how we want to play. The area we want to get better at is owning our big moments. We can’t talk about that with the guys [and say] ‘we need to be better at that’, we have got to train for it.”
Of not training the day before a game, Arthur revealed: “We did it a few times last season. We were struggling to win five-day turnaround games and we went to the one session in a week.
“Instead of doing two small sessions and fluffing around a bit, we did one big session where it was work and it was fair dinkum. It was two days prior and we had the day [before the game] off and from there we were pretty successful with five-day turnarounds. We’ve practiced it in the last two trial matches and the boys have come with good intensity and energy.”