There is no flannel from Key about 'taking each match as it comes'. He knows that Leeds must win National One next season, otherwise they might never return to the top flight; he also knows that they must win it convincingly, so that they can start attracting players for a Guinness Premiership campaign in 2009-10.

Key, 49, and head coach Neil Back, 39, have risked their reputations in leaving Leicester Tigers, where they were respectively head of development and technical director. They are to some extent in a no-win situation: if Leeds go up, the reaction will be 'so what?', and if they fail, the coaches will be blamed.

Leeds are favourites for promotion, having been relegated with their squad intact, with a flowering RFU-funded academy and with a £1.5m parachute payment that dwarfs the £210,000 received in central funding by the other clubs in the division. Two years ago, their predecessor Stuart Lancaster inherited a squad containing just seven senior players, and managed to hold off Rotherham's challenge to win the league.

Key, though, is looking further ahead than next season; besides, a 30-year association with Leicester has given him more than a passing acquaintance with the pressure of expectation.

While promotion is vital, it is not an end in itself. Key, who is finalising the recruitment of three and possibly four new players, is already thinking of survival in 2009-10 and then to greater things.

He says: "You have to think beyond this season. We are a business, and a business has to look forward and plan. We know what we need to do in order to stay up.

"We believe we are the 13th Premiership side. We believe we're still a Premiership side. Going through this season, we need to perform like a Premiership side, we need to behave like a Premiership side.

"We know exactly what it takes off the field in order to generate the right environment on the field. Leeds are going to be pretty ruthless going about our business, on and off the field."

The coaching duo arrive on three-year contracts. Their ambition is to finish in the top half of the Premiership in their third season.

"We are itching to have a real overall influence in developing a side," says Key. "We see this as a massive opportunity. Over the next three years initially, our aim is to turn a good side into an outstanding side, and why shouldn't that happen?

"Our objective is that in the fourth year, with us hopefully still at the helm, Leeds are playing in the Heineken Cup."

Key has been trying to restore the self-belief of a team which won just two of their 25 matches against English opposition last season, without fostering complacency. He stresses that he would not have come had he not been impressed with the players retained and recruited by Lancaster.

"Part of our approach is recognising that we were a Premiership side last season," he says. "They were not far away, closer than it seemed in the scorelines. They need to know that they are a good team.

"There is also a change of psychology. A side that lost the majority of its games last year has to deal with being expected to win every week. You can't be arrogant, but what you can't do is celebrate every win. Until we're promoted – when we'll sing and dance – each win is just a component part of the objective of promotion."

Key and Back have analysed last year's matches and spoken to players, trying to work out why Leeds lost so often. They feel that fitness was a problem: they think that conditioning coach Steve Carter should not be operating on his own when most Premiership clubs have a phalanx of fitness coaches. They believe that the improvements they and Carter have overseen will pay off, especially with the new Experimental Law Variations speeding up the game.

"In most matches, they were in the game for 60 minutes," said Key, who has made prop Mike MacDonald his captain and persuaded star wing Tom Biggs to commit himself to the cause. "Unfortunately, from a conditioning point of view, they struggled in the last 20 minutes. This team had resilience, and worked its socks off, but maybe lacked the ability to lock a game out or as we saw it, basically ran out of steam.

"We needed a better attitude to conditioning and we will get ourselves to a level that would be good enough for the Premiership – which will be frightening for National One teams."