Leeds Rhinos news: key men 'close' for Wakefield Trinity Challenge Cup tie as Jack Bird situation explained
Three key players are “close” to returning for Leeds Rhinos in Friday’s Challenge Cup tie at Wakefield Trinity, coach Brad Artthur has confirmed.
Brodie Croft has been recalled to Rhinos’ squad in place of Ned McCormack in the only change to the 21 named before last Sunday’s win against Castleford Tigers. Mikolaj Oledzki, James McDonnell and Jack Bird, who didn’t feature three days ago, all retain their place.
Speaking at his weekly preview press conference today (Wednesday), Arthur said: “There’s a good chance of Macca, Mik and Crofty being right. We just have to see how they get through today and how they pull up, but they are all close and keen to play.”
England prop Oledzki has not featured since suffering damaged ribs in Rhinos’ Challenge Cup third round win at Widnes Vikings on February 7. “He worked really hard in pre-season, then got busted in the first Challenge Cup game,” Arthur said. “He has missed the first four weeks and missed the opportunity to play in Vegas so it would be good for him to get back out on the field. If he does play it will be a shortened stint off the bench, but he is keen to get back out there.”
Second-rower McDonnell was due to face Tigers, but missed out after suffering a back problem at the end of the final training session. Stand-off Croft was sidelined because of a hamstring issue sustained during Rhinos’ Las Vegas win against Hull KR the previous weekend.
“We just have to make sure they get through training all right and then they recover well,” Arthur said. “Probably tomorrow we will know more about how they pull up.”
Rhinos looked tired at times last week, just six days after returning from Vegas. But the coach insisted he hasn’t considered rotating his side for Friday, despite the short turnaround. “The performance guys have done a really good job and looked after them when we got back from Vegas - into Vegas, out of Vegas and this week,” he added.
“We have no excuses. Today is the only day we are going to get them in ready for Friday. It is just the one session and it’s only half a day so they will be nice and fresh come Friday.
“We’ll get ourselves back to a bit of normality next week with more training, but we haven’t done a lot of training the last couple of weeks. It has just been about being right on game day. The players are aware of that, they appreciate that and they know what their job is, which is the 80 minutes on Friday.”
Bird was 18th man against Tigers after McDonnell was ruled out, but the former Wests Tigers man will have to wait for his debut. Arthur said: “He is getting close, but because of the limited training we’ve done it is hard to put him out there until I know he is comfortable in our system and is ready physically.
“He hasn’t done a lot with the team and next week is probably a better intro into the team, having three training days. We’ve not done much training in the last fortnight.”