Marsch: Rhinos will teach me Ell of a lot

ROSS HEPPENSTALL

BY

JESSE MARSCH is ready to go ‘Marching on Together’ in the spirit of the Leeds anthem... with Leeds Rhinos boss Rohan Smith.

Elland Road manager Marsch (right) has tapped into sports such as American football in search of best practice in the past, and is now ready to delve into rugby league.

Smith (far right) worked wonders at Headingley this year after transforming the Rhinos from relegation candidates to Grand Finalists, where they lost to St Helens.

The two coaches recently met and Marsch said: “I draw inspiration from a lot of sports – even more so than I do from our own. Some of it is about leadership, but also methodologies, tactics and what other sports value.

“With Rohan, we spoke at length about wanting to form a relationship – I want to go and watch his training sessions and I invited him to come and see ours.”

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Marsch continued:

“I was at the

49ers in the summer. I’m trying to make plans to visit the Golden State Warriors [the NBA basketball team] as I’ve become friends with their coaching staff.

“When I was at university, I watched everything from rowing to fencing to basketball, to see what those methodologies were and what they valued in their training and their performance.

“I love that stuff, so Rohan and I will certainly continue our friendship and I think be able to use each other as a resource, for sure.” American Marsch has spent years

studying other sports, and added: “When I was at Princeton as a volunteer assistant, in between jobs, I would go for a run sometimes early in the morning.

“There was a big lake where they had the rowing teams, and they would train twice a day.

“What I saw in that was the ability to physically exert themselves to levels that I thought were inhuman.

“What I thought immediately was, ‘How could I get 11 players on a football field to emulate that kind of output?’

“Rowing is a pure endurance sport, so it’s different, but with the way we train I try and maximise the players’ ability to give everything they can.

“In every single match, I want almost total exhaustion, knowing that they invested everything they could to get the result.

“I could take you through basketball and how it’s affected me with set-pieces, power sports and what they do in the gym.

“I don’t know rugby that well, but it’s something that through Rohan I’m looking forward to getting to know better and hopefully learning from.”