Leeds Rhinos v Hull KR: coach takes 'extra motivation' after shock Headingley play-off drought revealed

The eight-time Grand Final winners haven’t had a home tie in the Betfred Super League play-offs since September 29, 2017, when they beat Hull FC 18-16 to book a return to Old Trafford. That was Rhinos legend Rob Burrow’s final competitive appearance at Headingley and half-back partner Danny McGuire’s last as a Leeds player.

Teams finishing third and fourth in Super League this year will be rewarded with a tie on their own ground in the play-off eliminators, while the top-two have a bye through week one before home advantage for the semi-finals. Leeds will go level on points with second-placed Wigan Warriors if they beat visitors Hull KR tomorrow, but defeat could see them drop to fifth at the end of the round.

Coach Brad Arthur was shocked by Rhinos’ long wait for home advantage in the post-season series. “I didn’t realise that,” he said. “It certainly gives us extra motivation. I think the club and our fans, supporters and sponsors deserve a home final. It’s a long time, [but] there’s a lot of hard work between now and then.

“We have been very good at just focusing on us and how we get better and not so much who we play, but how we play. If we continue to do that we might, just maybe, give ourselves a chance to get to that end result, but there’s a fair bit of work to be done yet and lots of twists and turns left in this competition.”

The Robins are six points clear of Wigan and Arthur admits they “have earned the right” to be top of the table, but he reckons the title race is far from a foregone conclusion. He stressed: “I think they would understand there’s quite a few teams around them at the moment that are chasing pretty hard - there’s five, six, seven teams that have shown if they get there at the end of the year, any of them are good enough to win it. Hull KR are the team everyone’s chasing, but there’s five or six other teams who’d like to think they are a chance.”

Those include Rhinos who are on the back of a 64-6 win at Castleford Tigers last Saturday, after beating Leigh Leopards in their previous game. Arthur insisted: “I think we are on the improve. We have just got to make sure we keep doing that each week and keep challenging the boys to get better, but I am liking the attitude they are coming with every week and how they want to improve in those areas when they get something wrong.

“No one’s putting their head in the sand or getting ahead of themselves. They know that try against us last week wasn’t good enough and [are thinking] ‘how do we fix it, what do we need to do’?”

The 14-8 win at Craven Park last month will give Rhinos “a fair bit of confidence” for the sides’ third meeting of the campaign, according to their coach. “It’s exciting, we know how good they are, but we need to focus on us and being reliable from week to week,” Arthur said.

“In our last two performances, we’ve done more good things than we’ve got wrong and we need to continue to do it. We are nice and fresh from last week and we had a come-from-behind win the week before, so we’ve shown and learned different ways to win right throughout the season.

“Sometimes you’re not always at your best, but you can find that way to win. It’s more about us making sure we know exactly what our game looks like and how we want to play and we are learning more about us as we go. It’s going to be a tough game, they pipped us in the last couple of minutes the last time we played them at home so we are looking to make sure we put our best foot forward.”