Leeds Rhinos have altered the way they prepare for games this year.
In a major change, Rhinos boss Brad Arthur has axed the traditional captain’s run, which is a light training session held on the eve of a match. Instead, the players will have the day off.
Arthur, whose side begin their season away to Widnes Vikings in the Betfred Challenge Cup on Saturday, wants his side to have more intense sessions earlier in the week.
He explained: “It’s about our decision-making at big moments.
“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.”
Arthur feels Leeds Rhinos have made progress since he joined them in July 2024, 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.”
A day off on the eve of games will allow the team to train with more intensity earlier in the week, Arthur reckons.
He 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.”
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