of course it was. only the cheerleaders thought otherwise

Impressive press conference.
He's been here less than a week but he has dispatched Rohans philosophy of Rugby League to the bin. It maybe too late to save this season but at least we should be heading in the right direction. The squad does need strengthening but
i have wondered what they would be like with a decent coach, hopefully we may now find out.

RS did lots of good stuff at Leeds by all accounts from people who actually know.

He made errors in recruitment and was asking the players to execute something they couldn’t.

BA sounds the real deal. Whether he can get the team to change in the time he has is the question. Many of the errors are down to individual play, not just in flinging it about.

I really hope Arthur can make a difference.

Yep. Also the touch n pass comments and earning the right to play were also interesting. You could see he thought they’d been badly coached

The enthusiasm over Brad Arthur tells us how we’ve drifted away from the basics of the game, which allow any team to make best use of the players at their disposal. Brad has been in the country a very short time, and has done zero preparation regarding the team or the league.
He seems to be exactly what we need at the moment. He has got just the right amount of skin in the game. He will want to protect/enhance his reputation to get himself an NRL job. The best scenario from his point of view is to get the Rhinos playing demonstrably better, and get offered an NRL job. The club get a better performing team to help attract the best new coach.
None of us know how this will pan out. My guess is he will depart at the end of this season. There is a good balance between his needs and the clubs. Blease will get lots of feedback.

Very interesting interview, like most Aussies I know he’s direct and honest about the state of the club and playing side. I liked the fact he wants to return to a style of rugby that we know works, he’s clearly despatched the RS game plan, and replaced it with the simple fundamentals of RL, run hard, win collisions, earn the right to throw the ball around when you’ve got field position.

We will improve under him, however long he’s here for.

He seemed to go against every Rohan philosophy of rugby i.e. passive defence, soft rugby, touch and pass, earning the right to play etc.

He also mentioned how it was difficult to assess players on previous performances as they were essentially being asked to play another sport. See how these players perform when playing proper rugby before judging. I suspect some players will look much better when playing rugby the way it is meant to be played.

It's quite scary that everyone is simply relieved to have a coach who wants to do the basics rather than try take shortcuts etc.

Lots of good stuff ?. Smith has absolutely devasted us, no apologies for once again pointing out that he has set us back a few seasons with his hopeless signings. Obviously we have contractual obligations to them so it will be quite some time before we can offload them. Errors in recruitment has to be the biggest understatement of the year. The situation with Arthur whilst welcome is far from ideal, this is due entirely to Smiths incompetence. Arthur has at least given us a framework/format to work with, ironically it’s more or less what several of us have been advocating for months. Expecting a big aggressive performance in our next game. Failing that we are really up the creek without a paddle.

The initial impression is how far ahead of the SL the NRL is - different game.

I like his honesty - he wants to be in the NRL.

Arthur is a serious coach - it will be a shock to some of the players the standards he will require in training never mind on the field. Interesting see how often he mentions Blease.

No matter how long he stays he will add some real value to the Rhinos - it will show the quality the club needs when it appoints the next coach - possibly Arthur will recommend an emerging coach to replace him.

Arthur IMO is levels above most if not all coaches in SL. Will be very interesting to see how the players react to his coaching.

It's lightyears ahead. SL will never ever be as good but it has fallen back even further in recent years but that's a different topic all together..

Depressingly you are correct, however they seem to do the basics better than us. Mainly running hard on to the ball and an aggressive defence. If we could adopt that mentality it would give us a good platform to close game’s out. On the plus side, I am optimistic as to the future for the team as we have finally come to the conclusion that we aren’t doing the basics right. I might be wrong, but I think Smiths plan was to have a lightweight pack and play a high tempo game. Eventually wearing teams down, anyway that’s all in the past.

Watching the SOO shows how far behind SL is. Incredible game.

Short dropouts a feature

Yes and the tackling was brutal and scary at times.
Just shows you do not need loads of tries to be a great game.

Its great to see teams work hard and get the basics right to earn the right to take plays like short dropouts

It’s more that the rules are different over there aren’t they



NSW took one at 2 all

I think both points are true. When youve got a group of players who can perform the basics at a high level consistently you'll likeley feel more confident to take an early risk too. What would be daft would be trying to doing that stuff with a rabble who concede meters and caugh the ball up for fun before theyve got those basics in hand

Good to see some positivity on here for a change.

Arthur is making lots of encouraging comments, but he's also made it clear we can't expect miracles. Anyway, let's see how he goes after 10 games - and where he goes next.

Part of Smith's problem was the raised expectations many of us had of him. The guy did do some impressive stuff here. We did not make the GF by being 'soft'. Beating Wigan away was no easy job, and that team absorbed tons of pressure and physical attrition from Wigan and still found a way to win.

Just before our current season imploded, the way we played in that first game against Saints had lots of people on this forum excited, and many agreed it was the best rugby we had produced in years. I don't think I've seen Newman run as hard and look as dangerous ever since (not to mention several others). I suspect that psychologically the players put so much into that game that to not come away with anything dealt crippling blows to a lot of confidences. Ultimately we weren't able to play at that tempo with high skill as Smith wanted, and the experiment failed...

Yep, correct. They also execute the short drop outs very very well most of the time not like our attempts at this which were bordering on U11 stuff.

The standard of SOO this morning was unreal. What a game and what a comp they have over there... I bet Brad Arthur can't believe how pony we are for such a big club..

Genuinely curious to see what Arthur can get out of the forwards (who are now missing three middles) on Saturday and for the rest of the year. Worth remembering that we were getting beaten in the pack for a long, long time before Smith's arrival, and his inititially successful approach was born out the need to work around that weakness. Just hoping there is the same level of positivity around the coach at five on Saturday, because I think we're really up against it.

Donaldson is back Arthur so thats 14 stone middle compensating for the loss of Goudamand who is also a very small middle!

I think if we don't win this game, we can probably kiss goodbye to the play-offs this year barring a catastrophic drop in form from a team above us.

We raised for Leigh but I don't think we actually played technically great, where the result mattered most. Since then we've been very poor and the errors and lack of discipline have flooded back in.

I do think BA can make some immediate difference, but he's not going to stop instances like Martin or Fus coughing the ball up in first/second possession coming out of our red zone.

Wire away was a really good game for Arthur to see because it was an honest view of this Leeds team. Game enough, with some skill in patches, but lacking quality, size and pace and way too prone to errors and disorganisation.

Correct about the Leigh game - our defence was too passive, and our attack was a mess. We won but our structural problems were there throughout the game. I don't think getting into the play offs matters as much as seeing performances fundamentally improve.

Just on the Origin, its a bit daft to compare to SL. The NRL is a long way ahead, but Origin is almost played under different rules to normal NRL games. Its much higher intensity, and if players tried to play that way every week they'd be injured or suspended for long periods. Watch a mid-table NR game for comparison to Leeds vs KR. There is a gap, but its not light years. What we don't have is many genuine superstars. Even assuming we could get players motivated to play as hard as Origin they just aren't as good.

Would everyone be happy if Arthur did sign on for next year from what we've seen, or do we need to see a little bit of his influence on team performances first?

I’d be happy with either. His track record demonstrates his ability to coach. To turn around perennial failures into perennial play off participants and even a GF in the NRL shows what he can do.

I could understand some people wanting to wait a little longer, but I would be happy to go ahead now. I think the delay is on his side not “Blaster’s”…