Richard Agar openly admitted in today’s pre-match press conference that he is hunting for new players.
With Leeds still having one quota spot open, Agar is keen to fill it but knows that there is no point rushing.
“The market ebbs and flows – everyone in this country, they want to get their recruitment done a bit earlier,” Agar said.
“A lot of strong clubs get the clubs on longer-term contracts and rarely have players get to the last year of their contract.
“That’s why we’ve adopted a process to grow it organically from within and get as many through out pathway as we can, we think that’s the best way forward.
“But adding Matt Prior, Zane Tetevano, Rhyse Martin and Konrad Hurrell is how you strengthen your squad.
“For us, we’ve lost King through budgetary, we were waiting to see how Jack Walker came back, Konrad will be leaving us, but in a lot of those positions, we feel covered.
“We could probably do with another big guy, we really could, but when they’re all fit and well there’s a lot of game time in our current middles. Zane, Matty, Mik, Cam Smith, all play terrific game time, Tom is getting better and better, Donno (James Donaldson) is still around. We’re certainly not panicking that we’re short of a big bloke.”
Agar was keen to stress that patience is the way forward in the current market.
“One policy we may adopt is that with the budget we’ve got on one quota spot, patience can be a virtue. What might not be available now might be when there are coaching changes and salary cap movement. It is starting to move a little bit more, we’ve got our eye on everything. I speak to a lot of people every day over there, whether it be head coaches, recruitment managers. Getting them at half 6 in the morning is a good time to catch up. We’re aware of what’s going on.
“We may try and take the best player in our budget that’s on the board. We feel there are some positions where strength in depth might help us more than others. If we can find a player that can change, regardless of position, we may look at that too.”
The Leeds boss wanted to get across that youngsters are the future, though, for the Rhinos.
“But we’re mindful of succession planning and pathways, we want to make sure Holroyd and Gannon get through, we’ll pull some more from our academy next year too.
“We’ve got our fingers on the pulse, we know what we’ve got to spend and we think we can improve our team as and when the right player comes up.”
