APB: First off – congratulations! You got the job! Poison chalice perhaps or..? 

Lanny: Oh no, not at all! It couldn't be further from the truth. Phil resigned at the Gloucester game, on the Sunday, and that week suddenly became a busy week, because it was a bank holiday on the Monday and we had the Yorkshire Cup final on the Wednesday evening, and in between times I had to present my vision to the board on the Wednesday. I think the board had two routes to go down. One was to go for a high profile coach, throw loads of money at it and attempt try to generate a short term fix, and the second option was to go for the home grown players, and home grown coach so to speak, and bring in the right experienced players to support them. And when it came to that I was asked to present my vision and that day really they bought it. The board obviously have a lot of experience in both Rugby league and Rugby Union and I think there's a lot of comparisons to be made with the Rhinos about four or five years ago, when a similar position happened and people like Danny McGuire and Rob Burrows started to come through and there was quite a sea change. There's no doubt in anyone's mind – mine included – that that was the best thing that happened to the Rhinos. And from my point of view I'm convinced more so than ever that this is the right decision and in terms of a poisoned challice no I'd say quite the opposite, it’s a fantastic opportunity. 

APB: So in terms of the way these things are sorted out then, was it pretty much nailed on that if they weren't going to go for a big name, then it would be you, do you think? 

Lanny: I like to think so yeah. I was certainly the only one to present to the board… 

APB: …says its own story really…. 

Lanny: Yeah! I've completed my Level 5 coaching award, we've got the top-ranked academy in the country, I've been at the club since it was formed in 1992. I've seen all 257 first team players; I've either played with them, captained them or watched them, so I know every player that's been through the club. And in terms of the infrastructure of Yorkshire rugby, I have connections with all the major clubs in the county – and the minor ones as well – all major schools through the academy job; close links with Leeds Metropolitan University who are obviously big sponsors of the club now; links with Leeds University because I used to work there, so I like to think I ticked all the boxes except one - and that was the box of experience. One of the questions I was asked was "Did I think my lack of profile would affect my ability to attract high quality players?" …. 

APB: I'll cross that one off my list now ….! 

Lanny:…. And my argument to them was that what sells clubs to players is the other players. So players talk to each other, and they talk about environment,  and they talk about culture, and they talk about values, and they talk about facilities, and they talk about coaching and everything else, and whilst I recognised I wasn't perhaps as big a name as some others that were mentioned at the time, who perhaps could have drawn in one or two, what I said to the board was that, by the end of pre-season I'm confident that the message that will be sold by the players at this club to any other players who would like to come in the future will be a positive one. And I still believe that, and the best salesmen for the club is not the coach or the coach's name but the players. If you get good players who are well coached and well looked after and have good values and culture then I think they sell the club. 

APB: I think the proof of that is in the interesting piece that was done on Martin Schustermann the other day, where he was talking about how Diego Albanese sold the club to him…. 

Lanny: Diego is someone  I still speak to regularly, if you've got an Argentinian player comes up on the radar, then Diego's the first person to call. And every player who I've met has been mightily impressed by what we have here in terms of facilities. What I try to talk to them about is the culture and structure I'm trying to build. Obviously I've got a lot of academy players who are beginning to make the transition from academy to senior players, but they've still got a long way to go, but they do provide a good picture of what I'm all about and what we've created within the academy. And obviously the six or seven senior players that have remained – Tom and Rob who've come through the academy – Rob Rawlinson who I know really well and used to play with, Hoops obviously whose character stands out for it self, Chris Jones, James Isaacson etc, you know good people who've bought into the vision. Almost my first meeting with the group. Tough time though, for them and the club. That week between Gloucester and Newcastle I had a lot of conversations with a lot of players, just trying to ascertain where everybody sat. Some players had already decided to go, some were undecided, and some players minds were beginning to change because I was coming in; some of the younger players especially. One of them said to me "I wish I'd known before I signed". I'm not saying it would've changed his mind, but I had a great relationship with those young players, and it certainly made their decision that much harder. We stay in contact – I speak to them all the time, and they go with our best wishes and maybe our paths will cross in the future. 

APB: Is that a suggestion they may well come back? 

Lanny: I wouldn't go as far as to say that. They've signed good contracts with good clubs. But I'm a firm believer in fate, and these lads have a massive affinity to this club. And if anyone thinks they made their decision lightly they're mistaken. Because I spent hours and hours with them and discussed the pros and cons. Ultimately for whatever reason they chose to go, and they went with my support, and I felt confident that the club had done its best in the latter stages to retain them. 

APB: Do you think they were given good advice? 

Lanny: I've learned a lot more about agents in the last six weeks than I had in the last six years! Because as soon it became clear to the outside world what was happening at Leeds, every agent suddenly realised "I've got an opportunity to relocate a player to Leeds" – you know, it’s a good club to come to. So I think every agent this side of …ah! even in the Southern Hemisphere they rang me! So there was a lot of phone calls, and I learned a lot! In some ways for me they are necessary. I needed them to get the squad we've got now. But by the same token, I like to think that the agent's role is to offer impartial advice, and give all the facts. And I'm not convinced that all the agents did that all the time. An agent should get all the facts and all the opportunities for the players, and then let the player decide. Not influence the player one way or another. Young players are of more and more interest to agents in rugby union. I've been involved in the young side of it for five years now, and it wasn't really an issue at the start, but people like Danny Care, and David (Doherty) and Jordan (Crane) – they have agents and the agent's job is to find them options and you have to deal with them. There's no avoiding them…. 

APB: A necessary evil? 

Lanny: …Yeah, well, my opinion is that a lot of relationships need to be built and developed. And agents fit into the same category. You can't treat agents differently from the squad or your team, because if you take an unprofessional approach to an agent, or you do things in a manner that isn't really constructive, you're only going to hamper yourself in the long run. So for me one of the important things in the last six weeks has been to find out what the relationships were like with the agents and to develop them so they're positive. So people would think "Leeds are a good club, they do business well, and I'd have no hesitiation recommending my player to come to this club". So they're important. 

APB: So, pre-season! A) how's it going? And b) are you happy with the way the pre-season matches are shaping up? 

Lanny: I thought that question would come up!… 

APB: Certainly considering the shennanigans that went on last year, a lot of criticism was pointed at only going to Issoire and one other match. 

Lanny: I certainly think that it’s a very important one for people to understand where my thought processes were in terms of pre-season planning. One of the situations I inherited was to recruit a squad. In amongst that time was to develop the coaching staff into a cohesive coaching staff who are singing from the same hymn sheet as me, because obviously I've been involved very much in the academy and not the first team too much. So that was two pre-season challenges, and the third one was to plan the programme. What I wanted was a balance. Three things I think we needed. One was physically to get a team – you know to make sure there were enough players!. Two was to create the "Team" in inverted commas. You know to get the team spirit and why we all play together and what are the drivers for coming to play for Leeds. I'm sure if you ask Tom Biggs, or Rob Vickermann, or me, the answer would be "because Leeds is my club". If you ask some of the players we've signed recently I'm sure Leeds wasn't even on their radar a month ago. But for whatever reasons – family, opportunities to develop, push into the Premiership or whatever - the key thing for me with them is to develop the concept of the team, because that is THE most important thing for me. Why do you want to play for Leeds? Why do you want to come to the club? And not just WHAT we do, i.e. what we do on the field, line-out calls and so on, but HOW we do things around the place, and what values and culture we want to live by. For me, we had a team last year of individuals who didn't really pull together for the Team. We had talented enough squad to stay up, but we didn't achieve it. So the second thing in my planning has been getting the team together, making them click together. The third thing was to give them then the skills and the game plan that myself and my coaches have agreed on in the pre-season. When you get 20 new players coming together, you've got 20 different opinions, you've got players who've been coached by different coaches, and there are a lot of assumptions you'd make, that all of them would be able to do the certain things that we would consider as basic core skills to our club. So within the planning there's got to be a huge amount of time devoted to game plan understanding, skills to develop the game plan, and obviously I want to put my own particular stamp on it. There are a few things we'll take forward from last year, but there are other things I think we need to do to enhance our game plan. So all those three things are thrown into the mix, and also with than I'm thinking about the size of the squad, where we are with injuries – Rob Vickermann, Simon Worrall, Chris Jones has got a bit of a shoulder problem at the moment – and where we need to be in September, conditioning, so throw all that together and the planning becomes really important.  The main focus for me at the moment has been this team cohesion, so a lot of the time I've been spending is on group work, discussions about visions of values, why we want to be together and so on, and to make the culture such that if anyone doesn't buy into that, they stand out like a sore thumb. And we can then have the strength of character in the squad such that we can either pull them back into the team ethos, or ultimately, they'll go. I think that's slightly different from last year. Obviously we've spent some time on core skills, but we couldn't spend too much time on that because then you've got to get to the next stage, your lines of running, your scrum, etc. So we need to be prepared. And also I believe theres a "code" that players develop by playing together. I can remember when I played with certain centres with me as an open-side, I could pick their timing and lines of running very effectively. When you've got a new group together you haven't got that code, so you have to develop it very quickly. And the way I believe to do that is to play the game in training. Not necessarily all the time at 100% smashing and bashing, but every session we should play the game, not against pads or air, but against opposition. So we're beginning to develop that "code" as quickly as we can. So when ordinarily in June/July your pre-season would be on developing core skills and applying it to your game plan and so to establishing the squad, we've had to go pretty much straight to game plan. And with that, game understanding. Game understanding is developed through these designer games, conditioned games where we play against each other. So the "code" is – in my opinion – developed quicker.  So that's the stage we're in at the moment. And with that, we also had to factor in a camp that really pulled together the culture – not necessarily rugby related. So what we've got planned is…we've got competitive rugby sessions going on at the moment that are videoed and reviewed as you would a game. So when we've got an attack v defence session, we'll video it, study it, clip it and present it back to the players; you're playing a game in training. And we've played lots of those little games already, but obviously there's a long, long way to go. But I wanted to find time in the schedule to go on the team building camp which I felt was massively important. So we're going to the Lake District on a three-day team building camp, taking forty players and focusing on team building through various outdoor adventure activities. And these activities will test the cohesion of the team to the nth degree, hopefully.  The second week in August is the occasion when we could have had a game. But what I decided to do is to play an internal, trial game. When you're trying to create a team, you want everyone to feel included and part of it, but you don't want it to be a woolly, lovey-dovey atmosphere, you want to create a bit of edge. And I think the way of achieving that is by putting players against each other who want the shirt. So we're going to play that trial which will be pretty fiercely competitive. It allows me to see all the players play - so I'll see forty players, not just twenty-two; it allows me to control the game, so I don't have to play by the rules. For example I can say I want all off scrums, or all off line-outs, or do some exit sets etc, but it is still a competitive game with a score and a meaning to it – we're not going to change the sides around. I've got ND1 referees coming who are going to referee us. And after that game we're going to have a barbeque. And it’s the players' responsibility to pull that barbeque off for all their families and friends. So they'll have to go from a situation where they're knocking lumps out of each other to working together to pull off an event together within two hours. So we'll have created an environment where we've had a competitive hit-out, had the barbeque and the event and then we're going together to the Rhinos game that night, against Wigan which will be excellent. And then the following week we go to Edinburgh; we're going to play Edinburgh and Boroughmuir. The Boroughmuir game will kick off at 5.30pm, so I'll watch that game and then go straight up to Edinburgh to watch the Edinburgh game. I'll get to see forty players play again. Because there's a misconception I think that people are assuming that the team is going to be made up of the senior players we've signed. Well I think that some of the Academy boys have got one or two things to say about that. I know their qualities – and I'm talking weaknesses and strengths, I'm not blindly loyal to them – but I know that if you ignore youth its at your peril. It sharpens the minds of the senior players. For example when you've got someone like Kiernan Myall cleaning 130 kg, the best in the squad at the age of 19/20 years old, suddenly everyone's looking around thinking "Jesus!". So the combination of those two teams will be not necessarily the first team and the development team, it'll be the best team and the second best team. We'll go out in Edinburgh after and have a few beers, because I'm a bit old fashioned and team building occurs in a lot of different ways and one thing is to sit and  socialise and have a beer. I'm not suggesting we're going to go wild…. 

APB: …You're not all going to get completely wrecked then?!?... 

Lanny: …No! we're not going to go wild, but I am a bit old fashioned and I think it's part of it to be honest. And then the week after that we've got Northampton, which is a tough challenge, and again we can take down 28 players to that if we want; we'll have to take a decision on that based on injuries and where we are with availability of players, and then we're into London Welsh. So that's the rationale behind it, its getting the balance between creating the team – we've created a powerful culture already in the last three weeks, but we've still got four or five players who aren't in it. Martin Schustermann arrived yesterday, Jacob Rauluni arrives next week; Mike MacDonald, Andy Tuilagi, Pablo Bouza all arrive next week, so these people will have no idea of the culture, and we have to integrate  them and that's a challenge. So there's lots of challenges, but that's the thought process behind it. 

APB: That's probably the most comprehensive answer to that kind of question that I've ever had! And its important that people need to understand this. Often people only get to see how many matches are played and I know there's been rumblings on the website about "only going to Boroughmuir and Edinburgh followed by Northampton and its all away and no-one will get to see any of it" … 

Lanny: It is important people understand the thoughts behind it, and on playing at home thing, its  a pitch issue. it is disappointing for the fans I understand that, because when I was a player I wanted to play pre-season game at home. When I wasn't a player and I was a coach I wanted to see the first team to get a feel for how its looking. So I understand that, but we all have to understand that the pitch is out of action between August 12^th and August 31^st – for both Rhinos and Tykes because it has to have a rest at some point so we can play on a quality surface. So the rationale was explained to me and I explained it to the players, because I think its important. The pitch needs that rest time since otherwise its played on twelve months of the year.

Next Episode: Player Recruitment and Club Colours!

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