Leeds Rhinos legend, and future CEO, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, has discussed the development of the current squad, and how they have progressed as the season went on as his side bowed out of the playoffs following a late defeat to St Helens last weekend.
A last-gasp Shane Wright try will go down as one of rugby league’s best ever scores, as the ball went through eight different players before the back rower crossed to sink the hearts of the Rhinos players and fans.
The Rhinos led for the entire game following Chris Hankinson’s try in the 11th minute. It wouldn’t be until that final play of the game for Paul Wellens’ men snatched the victory and set up a meeting with Hull KR on Saturday evening.
The try will rightly be replayed for years to come, and it was fitting that the moment came on a milestone anniversary of another great St Helens try, the infamous ‘Wide to West’ try that they scored to defeat Bradford in 2000.
Jones-Buchanan spoke on The Leeds Rhinos Podcast to discuss the defeat, and reflect on the season as a whole. On the try itself, he admitted it capped off what was a brilliant game of playoff rugby for the neutral.
He said: “It was 25 years to the week since the first ‘Wide to West’ try. I’ve heard people coining it ‘Left to Wright’. Obviously, the wrong side of the fence to us. It’s disappointing for us as you mentioned, but if you were an objective observer it’s a great spectacle for the neutral. That intensity, in a playoff game that for all the other reasons, the spectacle was fantastic.”
Leeds Rhinos on the path to success as club legend rues play-off loss
Leeds’ 2025 have been transformative, as they reached the playoffs for the first time since 2022, and managed to once again compete with the league’s best. The current crop of youth at the Rhinos has been compared to the ‘Golden Generation’ that won so many trophies for the club. Jones-Buchanan, who was part of that group as a player, believes that the club are on the right path to success once again, it just needs patience and belief.
He said: “That Golden Generation maybe took five, six years to spin into any consistent results and it takes time. Triumph and disaster, treat those two imposters just the same… We’d come into that game having won every game where we’d scored first. Brad talks a lot about being in the contest for 70, 80 minutes this year, in every game and not lost by big margins at all.
“Every time we play the top six [this year], we’d won 54% of them, which is quite big. And, actually, it’s about third or fourth in the league. Even your Wigan’s and Hull KR’s are not much past 60. So, we’re good. We’re competing against the big sides.”
The future CEO, who will take over from Gary Hetherington after 29 years, believed that his Rhinos side could have done it, having been full of confidence in the moments leading up to the game. Then, Leeds looked to extend a season-long stat of winning 14 matches out of 14 when scoring first. However, it wasn’t to be as the big game experience of Saints prevailed.
He said: “Again, we’d scored first there, and it felt like we were going to win it, not just for the 80 minutes on Saturday, but coming into it as well and I know we’d obviously not won the previous two games, but the preparation that had come from it. Some of the players that got rested and the return of Jake Connor and Lachie Miller were really important and they started with enthusiasm.
“We scored the first try and looked good for 80 minutes, but there’s a reason why historically, they say never write off the Saints. Sometimes it goes into the 82nd, 83rd minute and you’ve got to be in that contest and come up with the last ditch attempts.”
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