LEEDS Rhinos chief executive Gary Hetherington has explained the Super League club’s problems since 2017 as well as hinting at new signings.
The Rhinos may have made it to the Super League Grand Final last season, but Rohan Smith’s men fell way short in 2023, finishing in eighth with some question marks posed over results and performances.
Another large turnover is expected ahead of the 2024 Super League season, with Hetherington explaining to the League Express podcast that they have still space on the salary cap.
“There will be some yes (new signings), we have still some flexibility on our salary cap because of the number of players that have left. We do have vacancies which will be filled in the next couple of weeks,” Hetherington told the League Express podcast.
Of course, there have been some Leeds fans that have witnessed what they see as a decline since the heydays of Kevin Sinfield, Jamie Peacock and Kylie Leuluai, with their most recent Grand Final success coming six years ago in 2017.
For Hetherington, there have been various reasons as to why the club has struggled to replicate that kind of success – some of which he explained.
“It was always going to be and they all came to the end of their career together which made it increasingly difficult,” Hetherington continued.
“Kevin Sinfield, Jamie Peacock and Kylee Leiluai all played their last game together. You’re not going to suddenly just replace them, you can replace them with three good players but they won’t have been part of the system for many years like those were. You can replace them but there would never be a direct replacement. Then soon afterwards we got a succession of other players all due to retire.
“That, coupled with the redevelopment of Headingley which was significant investment. It did affect the club’s ability to train, our capacity went down to 9,000, we lost our training ground with the floods which was another factor.
“When we finally got the development of the stadium finalised we got Covid which affected everybody. There has been significant disruption, but I’m not looking to make excuses as we always want to compete at the top end of the table.”
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