Leeds Rhinos news: coach hails 'immortal' Ryan Hall as winger prepares for new milestone v Hull FC
Record-breaker Ryan Hall has been hailed by his Leeds Rhinos coach as “an immortal of the English competition”.
The 37-year-old will make his 400th Betfred Super League appearance when Rhinos visit Hull FC tomorrow (Saturday). Hall, who reached 500 career games in Rhinos’ win against Wigan Warriors at AMT Headingley in May, has scored more Super League tries than any other player and also holds the England team record.
He is the 19th-highest try scorer in the British game’s 130-year history, with 345 and needs only three more to go above Paul Newlove into 18th place. Hall, who returned to Leeds from Hull KR at the end of last season, is under contract for 2026 and coach Brad Arthur is in awe of his latest milestone.
“He just keeps notching them up,” Arthur said. “I have been really privileged and lucky to have been coach in a couple of those milestones he has and to be part of it. You can see how the ultra-professionalism he carries himself with around training and off the field has led to on-field performance.
“He has got as many games out as he has because he has really looked after himself, but I think every game he has played has been at a really high standard, all the time. There’s no drop off in his performances.”
Rhinos will confirm their place in the play-offs if they win at Hull, or seventh-placed Wakefield Trinity fail to beat Huddersfield Giants later on Saturday. Arthur’s side dropped a place to fifth following Leigh Leopards’ victory against Castleford Tigers yesterday and the coach stressed: “With each game you play now, the next week becomes bigger again.
“Especially on the back of a couple of good performances, you want to keep that momentum going. We are doing lots of good things at the moment and we want to continue to do that. We are in control of the team we want to be and what we want to look like. It has taken a bit of work to get there so we need to keep control of that, but the opposition we are playing against are playing a really nice style of footy. They don’t give in, they fight to the death and compete really hard and they will make it a very, very tough occasion for us. I’ve heard John [Cartwright, Hull’s coach] say they are in control of their own destiny so every week for them is a Grand Final now.”
Leeds have won 11 of their last 14 games, culminating in last week’s superb 28-6 victory over league leaders Hull KR. Arthur stressed: “We are looking to be reliable and consistent with how we play. That has been a bit of our focus since we had our last week off. We talked about what we needed to do and said we need to do it on a weekly basis.
“We can’t get bored with what works for us and we can’t get bored with what we believe in. We have to prepare and recover well so we can be physical and front-load our effort every week, because there’s no shortcuts around it.”
Rhinos played some outstanding attacking rugby against the Robins, after running in 11 tries in the previous week’s 64-6 hammering of Castleford and Arthur won’t be telling them to reign it in. He said: “We only had a couple of errors out of red zone last week.
“Go back three weeks to the Leigh game and we had a lot of red zone errors. In the last week or two we’ve pulled back on the error rate. I get we are going to make errors, it’s where and how we make them.
“Our response to any errors we are making has been really positive defensively. While we have that mindset of being able to respond well and defend them, we can still have a bit of a licence to play footy, because I think that is a bit of a point of difference for us.
“We’ve just got to understand when and how and why we are doing it. Coming out of red zone is not the time or place to do it, especially if they are back to back. I think we have got smarter with it.”