Stuart Dallas looks like Leeds

After Jamie Jones-Buchanan led Leeds Rhinos in his first game as interim coach, he went home to review the 40-16 defeat to Castleford Tigers that knocked his team out of the Challenge Cup. It will have been a painful watch for Jones-Buchanan, who is a Leeds fan as much as he is an employee. Once he finished his work, he turned on his TV and watched Josh Warrington reclaiming his IBF World Title in an atmosphere at Leeds Arena that has been long missing at Headingley Stadium. The footage of Warrington telling Liam Cooper and Luke Ayling not to squeeze his jaw too tightly reminded Jones-Buchanan of the values that make him so proud to be from Leeds.

“He’s the epitome of what Leeds is all about for me: hard-working, consistent, loads of preparation, disciplined, humble,” Jones-Buchanan said in his next press conference. “And it was great to hear the city get behind him again. I’ve seen it plenty of times at Headingley. That’s what we want. That’s the picture that we want, that’s the image. He finishes that fight with a broken jaw and a broken hand. That’s what it looks like. That’s where you need to be.”

Jones-Buchanan wasn’t trying to teach his players how to become world champions. He wanted them to understand the attitude and sacrifice required every day in training and every week in competition — and the rewards available if they match those values.

Stuart Dallas isn’t from Leeds, but I wonder whether Jones-Buchanan ever showed his squad a photo of the Cookstown Cafu so they could see what success in Leeds looks like. If he hasn’t already, then he should ignore the clip of Dallas grinning after scoring the winner at the Etihad last season and instead show them a picture of Dallas being stretchered off against the same opponents at Elland Road on Saturday. One is the reward, the other is the cost.

It has almost become a running joke through the season that no matter how ridiculous Leeds’ injury list got, the curse could never stop Dallas. “Stu won’t mind me saying he plays through injury most weeks,” Adam Forshaw told The Athletic. A toe injury Dallas has carried for years has meant he was rarely able to finish a week of training. That couldn’t stop him starting 121 of Leeds’ last 122 league fixtures. Marcelo Bielsa demanded his players be fully fit if they wanted to play, regardless of whether they had the status of Kalvin Phillips or Raphinha. Yet even Bielsa couldn’t justify leaving Dallas out of his team.

What does that say about Dallas’ personal values? Humble enough to play wherever the team needed without complaining. Diligent enough to look a natural in any position. And downright stubborn enough to make sure he was one of the best eleven players in murderball every week, no matter how much his toe hurt or his muscles ached. A hamstring strain was never going to stop him. It took a shattered leg more commonly caused by a car crash.

It will be little consolation as he lays in a hospital bed in London, but Dallas is continuing a Leeds tradition: paying for our ambition.

Fifty years ago Leeds’ celebrations after winning the FA Cup were overshadowed by Mick Jones screaming in pain after dislocating his elbow in the closing minutes. Jones needed the help of Norman Hunter to climb the Wembley steps so he could meet the Queen after his teammates had already lifted the trophy and collected their medals. It was the first and only time Leeds have won the competition, and all Jones could concentrate on was not throwing up over Her Majesty. It was “torture” having to watch his friends lose at Wolves two days later and miss out on winning the double. But that was the price he paid for being carried off the Wembley pitch on a stretcher, covered in blankets, his one good arm poking out to wave at the crowd, listening to the Leeds end singing ‘M-I… M-I-C… M-I-C-K… Mick Jones!’ He spent the next four hours being sick after it took four doctors to put his elbow back in place, and spent the rest of his night throwing up in hospital. “These are moments I’ll never forget,” he said later.

Dallas will no doubt have received a message from Gaetano Berardi, who was rewarded for being the longest-serving member of the promotion squad alongside Liam Cooper with a ruptured cruciate ligament in the party at Derby. “When that happened it was really hard to take it,” Berardi said on the TSB podcast. “But it was a day of celebration. So I say — fuck the injury.” Taking Leeds to the Premier League was Tano’s “biggest dream”. Even with his knee in a brace and his career in limbo, “it was the biggest gift in my career.”

Maybe a word with Jones-Buchanan would help Dallas right now. He has his own place in Leeds’ twisted sporting legend. The player who embodied the spirit of the Rhinos’ ‘Golden Generation’ more than any other celebrated the side’s defining glory of 2015’s treble in a suit. He had been hit so hard in the Challenge Cup semi-final win over St Helens his quad muscle was torn completely from the bone, leaving him facing nine months of rehab. As he was stretchered off, his grandma was pushing her way past athletes twice her size to make sure her grandson was going to be okay. Yet he classes being asked to lift the cup at Wembley alongside his best friend and captain Kevin Sinfield as one of the proudest moments of his career.

“[That season] typified the culture and the camaraderie and the belief in the group,” he told me ahead of his twentieth and final season representing Leeds as a player. “It was only won by this much because the lads worked so hard and were sacrificial. I missed out on all those big moments because of the quad tear in the semi-final. It exemplified Kevin Sinfield’s character and the way that he led the team when he took me up to lift the Challenge Cup with him. Even though I wasn’t playing and I wasn’t fit I wasn’t forsaken either. Out of adversity is born a real message of hope and meaning behind what it means to be a Leeds Rhinos player.”

Throughout everything this season has thrown at Leeds United, I’ve based my faith in staying up on these players caring too much about each other, the fans, and the club to let the last four years end in relegation. I lack that faith in those running the club while Andrea Radrizzani disappears to South Africa, Angus Kinnear loses his programme notes inspo, Victor Orta poses with a copy of TSB’s They Sacked Bielsa issue, and Chad Hurley deletes tweets calling Radz the ‘chief chancer’. But that doesn’t stop Liam Cooper making sure his “brothers” are okay, or Stuart Dallas pointing to his heart as Leeds fans sing his name.

Now the players have seen the personal cost of what succeeding at Leeds looks like, they’ve been given a cruel reminder of what they must be willing to give. Now we need the mates of the Modern Day Madeley to play like eleven Stuarts. They’ve got four more games to do it. Only in Leeds can the image of one of our heroes punching the turf in agony become a symbol of triumph. ⬢