Sinfield's leadership gives the Rhinos a tougher hide

Youngest captain in Super League inspires Leeds for tomorrow's Challenge Cup semi-final

If Leeds really have found a new mental toughness this season – and the truth of that will be tested in tomorrow's Powergen Challenge Cup semi-final against St Helens – the credit needs to be split between several personalities.

There is the much-maligned coach, who should change his name by deed poll to Daryl "Under Pressure" Powell; there are the battle-hardened professionals brought in this winter. There is the work behind the scenes of the sports psychologist, Darren Robinson. But most of all, perhaps, there is the emergence of Kevin Sinfield as the sort of inspiring leader that the Rhinos have needed.

Powell created some surprise when he appointed the 22-year-old Sinfield as the youngest captain in Super League, ahead of players whose careers stretch back much further. But those in the know at Headingley say that it is no coincidence that his appointment has seen Leeds' best start to a season since 1972, with eight victories in League and Cup making them the only side in the country with a 100 per-cent record.

It will come as no shock to those who know Sinfield as a rather earnest young man that he has taken his new responsibilities seriously, but when old heads like Barrie McDermott talk about his eloquence in his pre-match addresses it is clear that he has been revealing hidden depths.

"We've started meeting an hour and a half before the game to go over a few issues," Sinfield said. "Previously, we pretty much came in and got on with it."

The question of how he communicates with his troops is one on which he has taken advice on board from Robinson, with whom he had worked in Great Britain squads before his arrival at Leeds this year.

"Some of it is basic stuff about how to get the points over – whether I should stand up and sit down. It's something I thought about when I took the job, how something a little bit different might help the lads. If it helps one person to focus it's worthwhile."

Another Robinson-Sinfield ploy has been to use the on-field warm-up as a way of warming up the crowd as well as the players. "We try to time it now to get the crowd behind us from the start and it seems to have worked," he said.

Of course, it would count for little if Leeds were not winning matches, but they are winning them and winning them in style – including a morale-boosting dress rehearsal victory at St Helens last week. Sinfield believes that a shift in personnel as been as important as any new set of techniques.

"Some of the new players who have been brought in, like Gary Connolly and David Furner, have made a big difference to our mind-set. They are natural leaders and I certainly don't have to tell them what to do on the field."

But there has also been a change of attitude among the players who have been at Headingley for some time. "We just realised that what we were coming up with wasn't good enough – for the club or for ourselves."

That is doubly true, Sinfield believes, of players like Wayne McDonald and Chev Walker – two whose form has shown a startling upturn this season.

"It's mainly come from themselves. They've both had a good look at themselves and said: 'Right, let's go for it'. They've been fantastic in training and that has carried over into matches.

"It was a great boost for Chev to get into the Great Britain squad last year and he's realised what he can achieve in the game. Wayne, along with Barrie Mac and Stuart Fielden, is one of the top three props in the country at the moment and there's a Great Britain shirt waiting for him if he carries on in the same way."

Sinfield should be a particularly useful mentor to young players coping with setbacks and disappointments. In 2000, he was left out of the Leeds team that lost the Challenge Cup final to Bradford at Murrayfield after playing in the previous rounds.

"I was disappointed for him," said Powell, who was then a player in Dean Lance's Cup final team. "It was a choice between him and Jamie Mathiou and I would have given it to Kevin every day of the week, but I wasn't coach then. It helped him to mature as a player and as a person and to realise that sometimes in life you have to wait for things."

Painful though it was at the time, Sinfield is inclined now to agree that it did him good. "I was upset at first; in fact, I was devastated. But as I sat at Murrayfield watching the game there were two ways I could go. I could start sulking and spit the dummy or I could roll my sleeves up and prove people wrong."

Not only did he manage that, with assistance which he is keen to acknowledge from his then fellow travellers from Oldham, McDermott and Iestyn Harris, but he also toughened up to the extent that he could accept being left out of Great Britain's third and deciding Test against New Zealand last autumn, after performing well in the first two, almost philosophically.

"That Murrayfield experience made me stronger mentally," he says. "I feel like I can cope with anything."

That includes a semi-final against a St Helens side which, with Ian Millward at the helm, has little need of input from any other psychologists. Sinfield chuckles at the idea that Saints already have one of the top men in that field, but says: "I've a lot of respect for him and it was great working with him when he coached Lancashire. He has some fantastic ideas and he's a very good man manager, which is the main part of the job."

All perfectly true, but those who have watched Kevin Sinfield this season believe that Leeds have got their own expert at getting the best out of the players around him.