Leeds Rhinos boss worried for sport as new rules threaten pace of the game

Leeds Rhinos Head Coach Rohan Smith underlined a major concern with the new rules and systems in place for the new Super League season.

In 2024, there will be a major change with the way the video referee will be used. Like in football with VAR, every game will have access to the video referee via a bunker.

This created a number of stoppages in the game against Hull KR for the Rhinos and Smith fears it will slow the game too much:

“It was very stop-start, which will be the case when teams concede penalties and that’s what we just discussed. We need to be a bit cleaner with some of our D, but overall we’ve been a clean defensive team. You guys have pointed that out as well at times, but we were still punished today, harshly at times I thought. But it lacked a flow. The video ref intervening for penalties and off the ball sort of stuff, that’s going to be a real sapper I reckon to the game. It’s going to stop the flow of the game. I think the match review committee can deal with those things and keep the game going but if that’s the way it goes the games are going to be slow and both teams would say that today I’d imagine but it was a good hard game. Could have gone either way. We got enough out of it and no major injuries so let’s move on.”

Leeds Rhinos coach pleased with display

Smith also expressed happiness at the way his side turned things around:

“Yeah, I wasn’t really worrying too much about the score. Yeah, I thought we looked fresh and fit overall, but again, there wasn’t much end-to-end footy so it’s hard to get a real gauge. I was really pleased with the young kids finishing the game off for us strongly there.

“They still had a lot of experienced players on there at the end, so it was nice to get a little bit of exposure for our young kids against some seasoned veterans. That was good to finish the game off and it wasn’t about the win today, but it will give James Donaldson more reason to enjoy that and reflect on it, having come out on the right side of it as well.”