Rhinos<\/a> have landed three new signings ahead of the 2026 Super League season with Danny Levi strengthening the hooker position, Ethan O\u2019Neill arriving from Leigh Leopards and Jeremiah Mata\u2019utia joining to play through the middle.<\/p>\nThe club have also extended the stay of Chris Hankinson for another season, while the likes of Jake Connor, Cooper Jenkins and Lachie Miller have all committed to new long-term deals.<\/p>\n
As such, it\u2019s fair to say the off-season period has been a successful one for Leeds in the way of recruitment and Arthur is more than pleased with how his squad currently looks, especially given they are approaching round one without any major injuries or absentees.<\/p>\n
However, while he does believe in giving youngsters a chance, the Australian admits that Leeds would always be willing to do business to sign the right man.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very happy with the squad we\u2019ve put together,\u201d Arthur said while on the club\u2019s warm weather training camp in Tenerife. \u201cBleasey has done a really good job.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re always looking to improve it and I say that all the time, there\u2019s never a \u2018we\u2019re not going to add players\u2019 or \u2018we are\u2019. If the right player becomes available to strengthen our squad, we\u2019ll always look at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe salary cap at the moment is tight and I think that\u2019s warranted when you look at the senior players we have in our group.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery coach hopes that your senior players and your key position players can get through a season unscathed. But you\u2019ve got to have a back up plan if that happens. We\u2019ve got two really exciting halves in Crofty and Jake [Connor] and if one of them were to get injured young Browny [George Brown] showed in our session against Huddersfield, and he\u2019ll get an opportunity in the Boxing Day game, he showed that he\u2019s more than capable with the support around him to step up.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes when you get an injury or a player missing, it just provides opportunities for someone else and we always focus on who\u2019s in the team rather than who\u2019s not in the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leeds Rhinos head coach on his new recruits<\/p>\n
On the additions Leeds Rhinos have made this winter, with all three set for a run out against Wakefield Trinity on Boxing Day, Arthur added: \u201cDanny\u2019s an out and out hooker, it\u2019s a tough position to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys sometimes get manufactured into hookers but he\u2019s played that his whole career and you can see his level of understanding of what the role is and how good he is at doing his job.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very, very good defender and it\u2019s going to take a little bit of time for him just to form better combinations with guys in attack. That\u2019ll come with more training on the field and it will come with some game time, certainly when we get put under pressure. It will be handy to add some competition to Jarrod as well, who did a really good job for us this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig Jez [Mata\u2019utia] is really good with the ball, he carries the ball strong and he brings another level of physicality to our team.<\/p>\n
\u201cEthan is looking for an opportunity to real start to own a position on the edge in the back-row, he\u2019s got good skills, very athletic and if he can stay injury free, he\u2019s another one that can really start to push and test everyone in the team around competition for spots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Check out the latest episode of The Serious About Rugby League Show on our YouTube channel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765275256_81_srl-logo.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leeds Rhinos head coach Brad Arthur has refused to rule out adding to his squad in the coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-327695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Leeds](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/OHL0541.jpg\")
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