Alex Mellor: Knee injury ends Leeds Rhinos forward's season

Mellor suffered damage to a knee in the opening minutes of last month’s win at Hull.

There were initial fears he could have ruptured an anterior cruciate ligament (acl) which would have ruled him out of the start of next season.

But Mellor confirmed: “It is not too bad.”

He said: “It is a full tear of my medial ligament in my knee - it doesn’t require surgery, it will just heal itself. It is going to be eight or nine weeks out.”

An acl is arguably the injury players dread most and Mellor admitted: “It affects this season, obviously, but I was sort of worried it would affect next season.

“I wasn’t sure where that would leave me, my contract is up next year so that would have been pretty stressful going into the season, just coming back off an acl.

“It was such a relief not to have done that. It’s still annoying to be out for two or three months, but when you look at it in context, it’s a bit of a blessing really.”

Recalling the incident, Mellor said: “I think I’d played four minutes.

“My foot sort of gets stuck underneath the tackle and then the whole weight of it comes from the outside and in.

“I just heard a massive pop and when you hear a pop you know it’s not too good.

“It wasn’t too painful to be fair. It was painful when it happened, but afterwards it’s just quite weird.

“Your knee just feels quite weak and you’re just a bit scarred from hearing the pop.”

Mellor, 26, is in his second year with Rhinos, after joining them from Huddersfield Giants.

His consistent form was rewarded with a call up into the England Knights squad earlier in the campaign and he said: “I’ve enjoyed it.

“I wanted some sort of consistency and to stay as injury- or as niggle-free as I could and see what sort of form I could get.

“I feel like I did that, it’s just annoying it has come to an end.”

The second-rower’s damaged knee is in a brace, but he revealed: “I can hobble about.

“I am doing upper body weights and ropes and upper body conditioning.

“I’ve only done a tiny bit of rehab’ so far because my knee is still quite sore and swollen.

“I’m in the brace and that gets me more and more flexion every two weeks.”

Having struggled in the backs earlier in the season, most of Rhinos’ injury problems are now up front, with Mikolaj Oledzki (foot) and Matt Prior (Covid) also on the casualty list.

Despite that, Mellor reckons Rhinos can finish in Betfred Super League’s top-six, which would secure them a place in the play-offs.

“We’ve looked at what games we think we can pick up on and where we’re at,” he said.

“I think the last two weeks have been a bit of a spanner in the works, put a halt to a bit of our confidence and momentum, but I think we’ve just got to go back to the drawing board, simplify things and remind ourselves how we got to the level we were playing at.

“We have to look at how we got our form and really focus on that, rather than focussing on negatives.

“I think the team can carry it through, whatever team we put out.

“We have got a good squad, I think we missed Mik and Matty last week, massively, but we’ve just got to prove even if those blokes are out we can still put our best foot forward.”

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