Inside the tactic that’s changed Dylan Brown and lit up a Leeds star

Over the course of the professional era, coaches have evolved through several stages of tactical complexity, each more intricate than the last.

In the 1980s, games were often highly chaotic – go watch the classic 1985 Challenge Cup Final again – without much structure at all.

As professionalism increases, coaches began to design set plays, then were able to sequence sets with multiple plays and eventually ‘playing to points’, aiming for set parts of the field to put on entire moves.

Once one team gets ahead with this, presenting a better tactical understanding than opponents, they don’t stay ahead for long. Everyone else catches up, integrates the new knowledge and someone else takes it forward.

The current cutting edge is ‘patterns’, a phrase I invented to describe what the best attack coaches are doing: essentially building chaos into structure through repeated movements with different endings baked in.

Imagine Wigan attacking with Jai Field primed on the sweep. Australian readers might do the same with Reece Walsh in 2023, as attacking mastermind Lee Briers swapped Lancashire for Queensland and brought his patterns with him.

The ball movement through hands, in concert with the off-ball push supports and decoys, are all designed to get the ball into the hands of the fullback as he appears in the line at the perfect moment with the run, the short ball and the long ball all options available.

The pattern exists to empower one player to be unpredictable. It’s a nightmare to defend when it works, because you can’t engage the most dangerous person until the last moment, at which point they have all the power.

The point of patterns is to build repeatable scoring moments. You put so many reps into them on the training paddock that, when the time comes to execute, it works like clockwork, and the controlled chaos of the end point ensures that defences can’t completely shut them down.

Brad Arthur’s patterns, when he was Parramatta coach, were quite unusual and since moving to Leeds, he has brought them with him.

Since BA left, Eels five eighth Dylan Brown has seen his form fall off a cliff. Even though he’s now set to join Newcastle on an insanely well-paid contract, that isn’t until next year for now, Brown is still leading the team under new coach Jason Ryles.

Since the start of the 2025 season, Jake Connor, stand off at Leeds, has seen his performances skyrocket. This isn’t a coincidence.

Arthur’s tactics with Parramatta and Leeds are quite different in a lot of ways, largely to do with the roster he has. With a decade at the helm in the NRL, he could pick from a list of players entirely recruited by himself, but with the Rhinos, that simply hasn’t been possible.

Thus his offload dominant, forwards-oriented game plan has been replaced by a more conventional method, probably also influenced by how spectacularly out of time that play style looked as the Six Again era grew older.

But one aspect, which is germane to Brown and Connor, has remained. Arthur makes the field massive, whereas Ryles appears to make it small.

Arthur’s Eels would often have their wingers right on the touchline, well outside of their opposite numbers. This columnist once asked him about it in a post-match press conference, and he used the phrase ‘keeping our paint’ to describe what he wanted his wide men to do.

Next time you watch Leeds – ideally in person – take a peek at where Ryan Hall and Riley Lumb are. It’s most guaranteed that they’ll be very, very wide.

The purpose of this is not to get around the outside (though, as we will see, that does sometimes happen) but rather to create space around defenders further in.

The wider you stand, the wider they have to stand, which naturally increases the space between tacklers and thus creates better one-on-one opportunities for attacking players to gain a qualitative advantage, either through superior size or speed.

With due apologies for again using a term I invented, it also allows for extensive ‘pinning’, where defenders are unable to move from their spot because of off-ball movement or perceived threat.

If an attack runs a lot of push supports or decoys, then tacklers are pinned onto a specific man and cannot pass them over or slide. Similarly, if an attack plays close to the line, the tacklers are pinned as they have to be accountable for the run first before pushing out.

Pinning enables a coach to ‘condense the line’, opening up the corners, or if they don’t, allowing for lucrative individual battles around the seam between inside and outside defenders.

If you’re a very, very talented player like Connor or Brown, this plays heavily in your favour.

Brown can blitz opponents one-on-one through his evasiveness and speed, while Connor has the size, ball-playing and guile to terrify whoever is tasked with stopping him.

Parra’s pet pattern was run from the right tramline, with Mitchell Moses – one of the best running 7s in the NRL and probably the best short-side exponent – dragging defenders over to the blind, while Maika Sivo on the wing would stretch the line as far to the left as possible.

That could get Brown half a field’s width to play in, known as ‘wide fours’, where play is stretched and the five eighth has the ability to control the attack.

He’d have a backrower on the crash ball, Sivo on the Harbour Bridge pass, a centre on the short and, of course, Brown’s run.

If you want an illustration, here’s an amazing one from Parra’s thumping win over St George Illawarra in 2022.

It’s right at the start of the game, and that shadow you can just about see in the top left corner is Sivo, who is so wide he’s barely there. His opposite number, Mikaele Ravalawa, is forced to hold width to match his opposite number.

It’s a 4 on 4, but Brown is far too good: he steps inside A-defender Moses Mbye and is too fast for marker Jack Gosiewski to cover the enlarged gap behind the ruck caused by Parra’s width.

Later in the same game, it happens again.

Sivo scores here as Brown throws the long ball – and he’s so wide, he’s not actually in the shot at all. Ravalawa is stationed just outside the tramline, condensing the line, but his fellow Fijian is keeping more paint than Dulux.

Over it goes and it’s another try. Similar pattern, different ending.

We’re seeing Leeds do this now, with Harry Newman able to offer threat through his physicality, Connor’s passing range offering options and the added bonus of his superb short kicking in behind.

It’s paying dividends. For Super League games, Love Rugby League has detailed location based data on where Leeds attack.

Almost all of their line breaks have been on the edges, with the bulk originating from the seam areas. All of Connor’s line break assists, which were also try assists, have been from the tramlines. Leeds’s patterns are working, just like Parra’s did with Brown.

Leeds have not scored a single try through the centre of the field in 2025 – only Leigh also have zero, while St Helens have managed it seven times – and have scored over half of their tries from close range set (within 20m), at a rate higher than any side other than Saints and Warrington.

The Rhinos rumble up field, get into position and then hit the edges hard. This, broadly, is exactly what Parramatta also did under Arthur.

Here is Leeds’ opener against Warrington recently. It’s a 5 on 4 with a mismatch, as Leeds have just made a break on the left.

Even though the game is condensed to the left, Hall is keeping his paint on the right and forcing Zane Musgrove, four in, to chase Connor.

The Snake takes it in close as possible, then throws a stunner of a no-look pass to James McDonnell, who is able to go over untouched as the line is so spread out.

Look at them here for their second. Hall on the right is basically in the front row of the stand.

The ball comes back the other way, and where is Riley Lumb? That’s right, miles outside of his winger.

Connor has a 3 on 3, holds onto it long enough to pin the defence to him before the long pass sees the winger waltz in, again untouched.

Those are just two examples that ended in points, but at basically any point Leeds had good ball, their wingers were like this.

Not everyone does this by any means, and there are plenty of other ways to manipulate defenders in the line to suit your ends.

We could spend all night going through them all, but here’s a good simple example of another standout use of winger positioning, as well as the repeatable patterns that can exploit them.

It’s the ‘slingshot’, in which the wingers begin more centrally and end up at the corner, using the extra running time to get up to top speed.

This the Roosters v South Sydney last year, where Dom Young is actually inside Joey Manu from a centrefield scrum in good ball.

Easts did this because their pattern requires James Tedesco, who you can see to the bottom left of the Telstra logo, to get the footy with options.

Manu runs an inside decoy to pin the centres in, forcing Bunnies winger Alex Johnston to jam onto the fullback sweep, creating the space that Young enters.

Note that, even when he receives the ball, he is still 10m in from the touchline.

They ran this pattern again later in the match, but this time, Tedesco holds, Johnston comes in and the passing lane opens for the Harbour Bridge to Young – who is in pretty much exactly the same position as he was in the first example.

In both examples, the purpose of the pattern is to create a decision for the winger – stay or go? – and to have the ball in Tedesco’s hands when he does, in the hope he’ll make the correct decision himself from the options that present themselves.

Look at that second image: if the defensive centre doesn’t come up, he can hit the lead runner, and if Johnston doesn’t come up, they simply go through hands.

Souths actually defend this quite well, as they force the Roosters to opt for the most difficult pass, but unfortunately for them, Teddy nails it. Similar pattern, different endings.

So what are Parramatta doing now? And is it stifling Brown?

LRL, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same access to granular location data for the NRL as we do for Super League, but friend of the column Rugby League Eye Test does, and produced stats this week that showed how much further infield Brown is receiving the ball than he did under Arthur’s coaching.

On Saturday against St George Illawarra, Parra sprung a surprise with their wingers, listing Zac Lomax in the centres and Sean Russell on the wing, but swapping them on the field.

There was a clear intent to use the slingshot style, which greatly benefitted the fullback, Isaiah Iongi, but did little for Brown.

The Eels split their halves and let Iongi play either side, formulating their patterns so that he had the ball at the crucial moment.

He scored one and set up another, so perhaps it worked, but it did seem a strange way to work when you have a rookie at the back and a million dollar player in the halves.

It’s not that Brown had a particularly bad game, but structurally he wasn’t allowed to shine. Indeed, when the play broke down, he was back to his best.

Early in the first half, Josh Addo-Carr was holding width and, when second phase came, Brown almost slipped through.

On the brink of half-time, there was a fast ruck and Brown was able to create a break for Kitione Kautoga on the right.

Parramatta have made far fewer offloads under Ryles – almost a third fewer than the BA era – with less opportunity for the running ability of Brown to shine.

In essence, they’re playing him like a halfback rather than a star five eighth and, while that might prepare him for life in the 7 jumper at Newcastle, as has been rumoured, it’s not much use for the Eels in the here and now.

Ryles, clearly, is looking to Iongi for the future – as well he should – and it might work for Brown too, as he’ll have Kalyn Ponga running off his hip.

Love Rugby League brought this up at the post-match presser and, after an interruption by Junior Paulo laughing that he was giving the game plan away, Ryles was insightful on how the role has changed.

“Dylan Brown looks after that edge and is a bit of a link there,” he said.

“Dylan Walker (at 13) gives us the freedom to do it because he helps Hoppy (J’maine Hopgood) out when he’s not on the field.

“The idea is not to lock Dylan on the side of the field, just leave him there and have wide fours all the time. It’s to be able to play off wider field positions.

“7, 6 and 1 – it doesn’t matter what order they’re in, I just want them to get the ball and get to space as quickly as possible.”

Brown’s game against the Dragons was the best he’s had all year. It was also the best that Iongi has enjoyed and, indeed, the first Parramatta win.

One-game samples are a little reductive for big tactical ideas that play out across a season or multiple seasons, but the use of the Eels’ star half is indicative of what Ryles is doing differently to Arthur.

Over in Leeds, BA is keeping on keeping on. Jake Connor is currently second in the Man of Steel leaderboard, empowered to his best form in years by a tactic designed to make the stand-off the star.

Whether it’s wide fours or slingshot, there’s plenty of ways to string a rugby league cat. It’s worth remembering, when we look at the vicissitudes of player form, that they’re all just part of a system.