Leeds Rhinos plagued by mounting injury problems

Last Friday’s round 19 fixture at bottom club Leigh Centurions was the first time Leeds’s first-choice half-backs, Rob Lui and Luke Gale, had played together this year.

The partnership did not last long as Gale suffered a medial knee ligament injury which could potentially rule him out for the rest of the campaign, if scans reveal a high grade tear.

To add to Leeds’s fitness woes, centre Konrad Hurrell left the ground with a foot in a protective boot after hobbling through the game’s third quarter.

Rhinos have also lost Alex Mellor, Mikolaj Oledzki and Liam Sutcliffe to season-ending injuries within the last three weeks and full-back Jack Walker has not played at all in 2021.

It has been a similar story all year the situation has worsened again at a time Rhinos’ management were hopeful of getting some key players back on the field.

Richie Myler, who has taken over from Walker as the last line of defence, admitted the continuing injury crisis is “frustrating”, but feels Leeds have enough talent in their squad to cope.

“It was the first time we’ve had our spine together all season so we were feeling good going into the game,” he said of last week’s fixture.

“Hopefully Galey’s injury is not too serious and we can get him back out there.

“I thought Kruise [Leeming] went well when he went into the halves.

“He has deputised there a few times and if Galey is out for a few weeks we are going to have to get some combinations going in training so we can fine tune that.”

Leeds led by only four points at half-time, but then pulled away to win 46-10, with half of their eight tries coming in the final 10 minutes.

“I think the second half showed we’ve still got the talent throughout our squad,” added Myler.

“We are a difficult team to handle when we are all pulling in the right direction and we did that in the second half.”