Absentees pile up for Rhinos ahead of meeting with winless Centurions

After an ill-disciplined game against Salford Red Devils last weekend, Leeds Rhinos return home to Emerald Headingley on Thursday night to face bottom of the table Leigh Centurions but will be without some of their key players. 

Head coach Richard Agar has had to make five changes to his 21-man squad ahead of the Centurions’ visit through both injury and suspension. On the positive side, Rob Lui and Callum McLelland could both make their first appearances of the season following injury and Liam Sutcliffe is available for selection again having completed his ‘Return to Play’ protocol following a recent outbreak of Covid at the club’s training ground.

That said, the Rhinos will be without Richie Myler (dislocated finger), Ash Handley (concussion), Alex Sutcliffe (knee), Jack Walker (foot) and Harry Newman (leg) all through injury. Added to that list, Konrad Hurrell will be absent for the next two weeks having failed his Head Injury Assessment at Salford when knocked out with a punch from Red Devils’ captain Lee Mossop. Zane Tetevano the final player on the ‘injury’ list as he continues his recovery from Covid.

In the aftermath of the Mossop punch last weekend, a brawl broke out and the game became somewhat mistempered. Bodene Thompson was shown a straight red card by referee Robert Hicks, while Luke Gale and Alex Mellor both received retrospective bans by the RFL’s disciplinary panel. All three of those Rhinos players won’t be available against Leigh.

Before kick-off, Leeds sit just outside the play-off spots in the Super League table in seventh with eight points from nine games and a win percentage of just over 44%. If they are to have a chance of reaching a first Grand Final since 2017, they simply must reach the top six come the end of this campaign and to do so, really can’t afford to be slipping up against the Centurions.

That said, opponents Leigh are desperate for points themselves and are winless so far this season having played 12 Super League games and lost all 12. Now led by interim head coach and former player Kurt Haggerty, the Centurions have come close on a couple of occasions including a narrow defeat at home to table toppers Catalans Dragons but are still chasing that illustrious first win.

Haggerty has only been able to name a 20-man squad for the trip over the Pennines to Yorkshire due to a long list of absentees including Tyrone McCarthy and Ben Reynolds who both sustained injuries in defeat to Warrington Wolves last time out.

Keanan Brand, Adam Sidlow and Alex Gerrard are all involved however, returning from long term injuries, and Nathan Peats is back in the squad too having featured in the Combined Nations All Stars team that beat England last Friday in a mid-season international.

Bottom of the table, the Leythers are just four points behind Salford (who have a win percentage of 18.18%) and if they could manage to come away from Leeds with their first victory, then it could be the spark required to kickstart their season and commence the fight against what looks like inevitable relegation.

Head-to-Head

With Leigh’s last Super League season – before this – coming in 2017, the two sides most recently met in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Challenge Cup with the Centurions then a Championship side. In a game played at Featherstone Rovers home ground due to Headingley being unavailable, Leeds did come out on top comfortably in the end by 52-22. That could have been different had Pete Mata’utia not been sent off after just five minutes for the Centurions however. Matty Dawson-Jones also seeing red late in that game for dissent.

Including that game at Featherstone as a home game for the Rhinos, they have actually come out on top on their own patch against the Leythers on the last 12 meetings. They last tasted Headingley defeat against Leigh in the Championship back in 1984. In fact, 1988 was the last time that Leigh tasted victory of any sort against the Rhinos. Again in the Championship, Leigh enjoyed an 18-6 success that day at their old ground Hilton Park that day.

Leigh certainly don’t have history on their side going into Thursday’s encounter, nor current form, but stranger things have happened, and they have to win a game at some point this year, surely?

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