Keith Senior hasn’t ruled out a possible move into becoming a head coach in the future. The Rhinos legend has been coaching with another one of his former playing sides, Sheffield Eagles, since 2015 and is currently serving as assistant to Eagles legend and head coach Mark Aston.
The five-time Super League Dream Team inductee had a glittering playing career in Super League. Since then Senior has certainly earned his stripes in coaching for the last eight years and feels it’s maybe time to make the step up from assistant to top job.
Asked about his coaching career, Senior said: “It’s the million dollar question isn’t it? You never say never because when I was playing I never really wanted to coach first team, I wanted to work in youth development and then I ended up getting into first-team coaching and enjoying it.
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“I’ve got dreams and aspirations and I’m getting to a stage where I probably need bigger challenges, coaching is a very ruthless and dangerous industry. One minute you can be coaching and the next minute you’re never coaching again.
“I’m comfortable at the moment. I suppose that’s not necessarily a good thing. I know I could be a head coach of a first-team, I’ve done the assistant coaching for a while now, about eight years now. I’ve had some really good coaches, some really bad coaches, I’ve experienced a lot of levels.”
Alongside his work in coaching, Senior has also partaken in plenty of other important cases during his post-playing career whether that be with the Leeds Rugby Foundation or Rugby League Cares.
He said: “Working with Rugby League Cares has also changed my perspective on coaching, you talk about the whole personal well-being issue or mental health, when I first went to Sheffield I was in the full-time, full-on mentality and that’s not what Championship rugby is about. The way that I went there was too intense, too deep, it was too hard so it’s been great for me to understand psychology a little bit.
“Also challenging myself and being more of a man manager and being more empathetic to these players. As a player I was terrible, really bad, if you’ve got a problem then leave it at the door because we’ve got a game, we’ve got a game to win whereas now I’m a bit more empathetic in that respect so I’ve picked up a lot of good qualities over the years which stands me in great stead for coaching.
“I probably need to (become a head coach) for the challenge, like I said it could be in one year, it could be a five year thing I don’t know. I’ve got the work ethic, sometimes luck comes into it. Sometimes certain coaches that are really good coaches have just gone to the wrong club at the wrong time. It’s something that I’m potentially looking into but it’d have to be the right opportunity.
“I’m loving my work at Rugby League Cares, I’m enjoying Sheffield a lot more because there’s now a future whereas five years ago we were playing at Wakefield, Featherstone and Doncaster, we were all over the place. There’s actually some huge building blocks now being put into place which will be hugely beneficial to the club and it’s nice to have that vision."
He added: “I’m not getting any younger. I'm 47 now, I’ve done my assessments, I’ve done my years of consistent coaching and I’ve learnt a lot. I’m still going to get things wrong but I’ve got a lot to offer,” He added."
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