'Greedy' Kevin Sinfield's hungry for more

 

Inside the tunnel at Old Trafford on Saturday night, Kevin Sinfield will be licking his lips at the prospect of a seventh Grand Final.

When he talks about rugby league's domestic showpiece he sounds ravenous for success despite a career that has seen him win the Super League's coveted prize five times and rack up more than 3,000 points for Leeds Rhinos.

He clearly feels at home at Manchester United's ground - all his Grand Final wins have come there - and the players that more regularly grace its hallowed turf are clearly behind him - Man Utd duo Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand have both been singing Sinfield's praises in the past week.

But Sinfield is the antithesis of the Premier League's excess. He is the archetypal one-club man, grew up to a backdrop of Che Guevara posters as the son of trade unionists and is back at university studying for a Masters.

Understandably, it is not the 32-year-old's political leanings that will drive him tomorrow night but his hunger for success, which shows no signs of being sated.

"The thing about winning a Grand Final is that it makes you greedy, and I mean that in a good sense," he said. "You want to go back and feel that again, the euphoria and satisfaction is huge having worked with a team of players. It tastes good and you want that taste again."

Sinfield has been left with a sour taste in a Grand Final just once back in 2005 when the now struggling Bradford Bulls proved too strong, but he manages to even see the positive in recalling those events.

"If you lose, it either puts fuel on the fire for next season or else it feels the greed," he added. "Hopefully it'll be the greed again.

"You just don't want to fail as it's the last game for months. It's not like during the course of the season when you can make amends the following week. This is it and, if you lose, the disappointment stays with you for a long time, through the break, through those winter hill runs in pre-season training until that first game."

Family life - Sinfield has two sons, the older of which Jack, eight, is already playing rugby league - are the great leveller in his life whether a game ends in celebration or commiseration.

"The kids aren't really that bothered, which is great as it keeps you grounded," he said. "You don't even talk about it as they just want dad to be dad."

Despite that, it is his children above all that give him the motivation not just to stay at the top of his game but to improve still further even 14 years into his time at the Rhinos.

"I want the kids to be proud of what I achieve," he said. "That's changed over the years. When I was in my early 20s, the motivation was to do my parents proud but that's shifted."

By the Rhinos' high standards, Super League XVII has been disappointing. They finished fifth and 10 points behind table toppers Wigan but, yet again, they delivered when it mattered, beating the Warriors 13-12 in the play-off semi-finals thanks to a Sinfield cameo.

On paper, final opponents Warrington have been the stronger side during the season, being edged out of the top spot by Wigan by a solitary point, allied to the fact they defeat Leeds in the Challenge Cup final.

There is no sense of revenge for Sinfield - "it's not about revenge, it's about going out there and winning" - but there is a sense that history is on Leeds' side thanks to their ability to shine on the ultimate domestic stage.

Explaining why that has happened, he is at a loss. "It's really difficult to say," he said. "To try to put my finger on why the Grand Final makes us suddenly come alive, I like to think it's the work we do to click coming together at just the right time."

Much of that is down to the team's conditioning, to the point that Sinfield argues his body feels in as good shape now as it did at the star of the season, remarkable considering the hits the players take during the course of the season.

His mind is similarly fresh and he is seen as one of the thinking men of the sport. He is a few weeks into a sports business masters to add to a previous sports science degree and his classmate is from the rugby league fraternity, Jamie Peacock.

Such is Sinfield's ordinariness, he insists his arrival in class doesn't exactly turn heads. "Most of the people on the course are foreign so they don't know who we are," he said. If all goes to plan, Sinfield can fully expect to turn heads tomorrow night.

Tickets to the Rugby League World Cup 2013 will go on sale on 26 October. For more information, call 0844 8472013 or visit www.rlwc2013.com/tickets

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