Leeds came away from their festive friendly with Wakefield today in good spirits after a comprehensive 34-6 triumph over Trinity in which they showed plenty of positives.
Head Coach Richard Agar certainly believed so but was also keen to stress that it was early days for his squad: “It’s a workout, we wanted to get as good a side out as possible and play as well as we can.
“All in all I think there was some stuff in there that will help us along the way and that we can learn from and some areas we want to tidy up and also some good bits and some really good bits we can build on and be very effective with as we move forward.
“At the start of the game we could of been accused of trying to chase points too much and we had a few discipline areas we need to fix up. I thought we had some great energy off the bench through Morgan Gannon, Jarrod O’Connor and Brad Dwyer and Liam Tindall.”
The likes of Gannon, Tindall and O’Connor weren’t the only young Rhinos to catch the eye with Jack Sinfield playing for the first team for the very first time this afternoon. He played a key role in Tom Briscoe’s try and nailed two conversions one of which had a great level of difficulty and saw the 17-year-old use the same technique his father used to such good effect.
“It was lovely to see Jack [Sinfield] get a few nice touches for the try and nailing the conversion,” Agar said.
“It’s a great little story. When we’ve been trying to shape our squad we look back at the Golden Generation and they had an abundance of spine players and leaders and we feel we have a really strong core of young English talent.
“We feel that Jack is a player who at junior level has stood out. There’s not a massive expectation for him to play first grade this year but we felt that getting him in with Aidan Sezer and Blake Austin would be giving him a head start.
“We think he has the skills and the temperament and is a player we can develop in that position.”
Turning the attention to Leeds’ first choice halfbacks rather than a stand-off for the future, Agar was pleased with Austin and Sezer’s first performance together: “There were some positive stories out there today. We would expect our attack to be a bit clunky with this their first time playing together but there were also some good bits of management in there and the way they kicked the ball were really good signs for us.”
He also spoke about fellow new signing James Bentley: “High energy and I thought defensively he was very good. I thought our right edge got most of the traffic and came up with some good defensive plays.”
However, two of the three new signings picked up minor injuries. When asked about the state of his squad’s fitness after the game, Agar said: “Fairly unscathed, we had seven substitutes so we didn’t need to leave anyone out there. James’ [Bentley] achilles was a bit sore so we took him off there and Aidan Sezer rolled his ankle a fraction.
“We always planned to give Jack [Sinfield] 15 minutes at the end of the game. I don’t think anything is too much to worry about.”
Agar is still hoping to have team selection headaches of the more positive kind next year after an injury hit 2021 campaign, however he was unwilling to state whether or not Richie Myler, who enjoyed a brilliant performance, would remain the first choice fullback despite Jack Walker’s return: “It’s too early for that, Richie has played that position well for a long time and we’re very lucky to have those guys in our squad.
“I’ll use a quote from Tom Briscoe when we had the squad number conversation. He’s a highly experienced player and on the back of a pretty good season last year and his immediate reaction was ‘if you want to play in a team that’s going to challenge there’s got to be competition for places.'”
“If I’m getting headaches like that opposed to the ones I had last year they’ll be welcome.”
The Rhinos stars will now enjoy a week off following the victory.
