The initial impression is how far ahead of the SL the NRL is - different game.

I like his honesty - he wants to be in the NRL.

Arthur is a serious coach - it will be a shock to some of the players the standards he will require in training never mind on the field. Interesting see how often he mentions Blease.

No matter how long he stays he will add some real value to the Rhinos - it will show the quality the club needs when it appoints the next coach - possibly Arthur will recommend an emerging coach to replace him.

Arthur IMO is levels above most if not all coaches in SL. Will be very interesting to see how the players react to his coaching.

It's lightyears ahead. SL will never ever be as good but it has fallen back even further in recent years but that's a different topic all together..

Depressingly you are correct, however they seem to do the basics better than us. Mainly running hard on to the ball and an aggressive defence. If we could adopt that mentality it would give us a good platform to close game’s out. On the plus side, I am optimistic as to the future for the team as we have finally come to the conclusion that we aren’t doing the basics right. I might be wrong, but I think Smiths plan was to have a lightweight pack and play a high tempo game. Eventually wearing teams down, anyway that’s all in the past.

Watching the SOO shows how far behind SL is. Incredible game.

Short dropouts a feature

Good to see some positivity on here for a change.

Arthur is making lots of encouraging comments, but he's also made it clear we can't expect miracles. Anyway, let's see how he goes after 10 games - and where he goes next.

Part of Smith's problem was the raised expectations many of us had of him. The guy did do some impressive stuff here. We did not make the GF by being 'soft'. Beating Wigan away was no easy job, and that team absorbed tons of pressure and physical attrition from Wigan and still found a way to win.

Just before our current season imploded, the way we played in that first game against Saints had lots of people on this forum excited, and many agreed it was the best rugby we had produced in years. I don't think I've seen Newman run as hard and look as dangerous ever since (not to mention several others). I suspect that psychologically the players put so much into that game that to not come away with anything dealt crippling blows to a lot of confidences. Ultimately we weren't able to play at that tempo with high skill as Smith wanted, and the experiment failed...

Genuinely curious to see what Arthur can get out of the forwards (who are now missing three middles) on Saturday and for the rest of the year. Worth remembering that we were getting beaten in the pack for a long, long time before Smith's arrival, and his inititially successful approach was born out the need to work around that weakness. Just hoping there is the same level of positivity around the coach at five on Saturday, because I think we're really up against it.

Donaldson is back Arthur so thats 14 stone middle compensating for the loss of Goudamand who is also a very small middle!

I think if we don't win this game, we can probably kiss goodbye to the play-offs this year barring a catastrophic drop in form from a team above us.

We raised for Leigh but I don't think we actually played technically great, where the result mattered most. Since then we've been very poor and the errors and lack of discipline have flooded back in.

I do think BA can make some immediate difference, but he's not going to stop instances like Martin or Fus coughing the ball up in first/second possession coming out of our red zone.

Wire away was a really good game for Arthur to see because it was an honest view of this Leeds team. Game enough, with some skill in patches, but lacking quality, size and pace and way too prone to errors and disorganisation.

Correct about the Leigh game - our defence was too passive, and our attack was a mess. We won but our structural problems were there throughout the game. I don't think getting into the play offs matters as much as seeing performances fundamentally improve.

Just on the Origin, its a bit daft to compare to SL. The NRL is a long way ahead, but Origin is almost played under different rules to normal NRL games. Its much higher intensity, and if players tried to play that way every week they'd be injured or suspended for long periods. Watch a mid-table NR game for comparison to Leeds vs KR. There is a gap, but its not light years. What we don't have is many genuine superstars. Even assuming we could get players motivated to play as hard as Origin they just aren't as good.