Ian Blease reveals Leeds Rhinos recruitment plans and first major transfer target

Leeds Rhinos will accelerate their recruitment plans for 2025 now they have agreed a deal for Brad Arthur to coach the club next season: but sporting director Ian Blease admits they do not have an abundance of salary cap space to work with.

The Rhinos and Arthur will continue their relationship together next year after the Australian agreed an initial one-year contract extension, which will be reviewed at the start of 2025 with a view to potentially continuing into 2026.

Leeds had already been making tentative recruitment plans before Arthur agreed to stay at the club but Blease admits that now the coach has signed on the dotted line, those plans can be pushed on and moved forward – with one primary target from overseas already identified who the Rhinos will ‘have a good go at’.

Blease revealed: “There’s a process we’re going to go through in terms of recruitment. There’s a salary cap we’ve got to adhere to which is probably my main concern at the moment, how we get new players within that.

“With Rhyse (Martin) not signing, that gives us a bit of flexibility but there’s work to be done on that. My main processes with recruitment have been ongoing for a number of weeks, even before Brad agreed to stay.

“We’ll do some things over the next month or so, but the window opens up in Australia again so it’s whether we’re patient. We’ve identified one who we’d like to have a good go at now, so we’ll try and progress that.”

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Blease then again reiterated that any notion of significant player turnover at AMT Headingley in the winter would be wide of the mark but that with Arthur’s deal now confirmed, Leeds can press ahead with their plans.

He said: “We were talking, but until we got him secured we were in a position where we needed that security first. But we haven’t got much space in terms of cap. We’ve got to work with what we’ve got. Now he’s on board though we can identify targets a lot easier.”

Blease also confirmed that he will hold talks with Arthur at the beginning of 2025 in regards to whether or not he will continue as head coach in 2026.

He said: “We’ve agreed that we will discuss 2026 at the beginning of next year, so we’ll do that. We trust each other to have those conversations professionally and we’ll see where we are at that stage.”

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