Young Rhinos using pre-season to develop off the field skills

Alongside their training for the upcoming Reserves, Academy and Scholarship seasons, the current group of players on the Leeds Rhinos pathway have also been putting in the work off the field to develop their interpersonal and life skills.

Over the last three months, the club has organised workshops and presentations for players to learn more about topics which can affect their life outside of the sport, such as drug and steroid use, mental health and social media. Under-18s players got the opportunity to listen to Leeds Rhinos Head of Player Welfare, Nigel O’Flaherty-Johnson talk about sports psychology, and Head of Media and PR, Phil Daly speak on the issues around safety on social media.

There were also special presentations from West Yorkshire Police’s DCI Phil Jackson and current Academy head coach Tony Smith, who balances his coaching role with working for UK Anti-Doping. Academy player Harry Taylor said the series of workshops have been beneficial to him personally, as well as the whole team.

"I think it's really important to learn about things like this because it’s easy to go down the wrong road"” he said. “Obviously we do a lot out on the rugby field but there’s another side to it. We do a lot about being better people and improving our interpersonal skills and having good morals alongside our rugby. We’ve done a few things in school but nothing really like this. These have been sit-down talks, where we get fed the right information.”

The workshops have also been available to players in the Rhinos Scholarship, and they got to hear from current Rhinos player James Donaldson about his 13-year journey through the sport. Away from the Bartercard Training complex, the scholars got the chance to develop their team-building skills on the beaches at Bridlington.

Leeds Rhinos Head of Youth, John Bastian, said he was pleased with how the club’s youngsters have responded all the pre-season. “It’s important that we echo the importance of understanding topics like drugs and wellbeing,” he said.

“The lads are really good anyway but what is important for them to know is that sometimes you can go down the wrong path and the impact that has on everybody around them.“We will continue to look at different workshops throughout the year to keep developing our players, both as a team and individually, because they are really important."