Coach Richard Agar pledges safety first for Leeds Rhinos in Wakefield Trinity Super League rematch

Rhinos played seven times in October, including a Coral Challenge Cup semi-final and final and tomorrow’s (Sunday's) rematch at Wakefield Trinity will be their fourth game in 10 days.

Agar feels the 30-6 loss to Wakefield two days ago has realistically ended Rhinos’ top-four hopes and insisted his priority for the rest of the season is looking after his players.

Prop Tom Holroyd is set for surgery on a hand injury and will miss the rest of the campaign and Agar revealed a host of other players are carrying knocks.

Holroyd is the only player from Thursday’s team not named in Rhinos’ initial squad for the game at Mobile Rocket Stadium, Belle Vue, but Agar confirmed changes are likely after fitness checks at today’s team run.

“We had seven missing on Thursday - the four on Covid, plus Harry Newman, James Donaldson and Adam Cuthbertson,” Agar said.

“Two blokes played with broken ribs and had injections, so we probably aren’t going to play them from a welfare point of view - they just aren’t fit to play.

“Tommy Holroyd has had a bad wrist for a number of weeks and we are going to get him in for an operation on that straight away so he will be out for the rest of the season.

“He wanted to carry on, but we’ve reached the stage where enough is enough.

“We have two blokes playing with injections for busted shoulders and four of our blokes have played three games in seven days.

“We have been trying to win games and chase the top-four.

“We are not whingeing, but we have got some mentally very fatigued players so we will see who is fit to play and select from who we feel is fit and fresh.”

Rhinos remain fifth in Betfred Super League, but their chances of overhauling fourth-placed Catalans Dragons’ win percentage seem over.

“We don’t think we can make the top-four now,” Agar conceded.

“Losing [on Thursday] - however the fixtures go - makes it fairly impossible.

“We will put the welfare of our guys first.”

Rhinos have four games remaining in the regular season, including tomorrow.

But their twice-postponed fixture at Catalans is unlikely to be rearranged and there is doubt over next Friday’s derby against Castleford Tigers.

Thirteen Tigers played tested positive for Covid-19 after their loss at Leeds on Monday, leading to Rhinos’ Richie Myler, Tom Briscoe, Konrad Hurrell and Matt Prior going into isolation for two weeks and ruling them out of the rest of the league campaign.

“We saw on Thursday the impact it has had on them,” Agar said of the combined effects of fixture congestion, injuries and the coronavirus situation.

“It is disappointing, but it is hard as a coach seeing the carnage going on behind the scenes.

“We have played more games than anybody and some of them have been really emotional games.

“We’ve got six of our Wembley team unavailable, plus Harry Newman.

“That is close to 40 per cent of our salary cap unavailable, if you include [long-term casualty] Stevie Ward.

“With the frequency of the games and how tough they have been, am I surprised we got a flat performance the other night? I can understand it.

“It certainly wasn’t through lack of effort, but the guys simply didn’t have any physical or emotional response.

“They tried their backsides off in the second half, but it was clear the guys didn’t have any spark.

“We will try to find that this weekend by moving our team around a bit.”

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