Featherstone Rovers coach Brian McDermott adjusting to loss of key players as Jesse Sene-Lefao faces weeks out

Sene-Lefao was injured attempting to touch down after just six minutes of Rovers’ 30-12 victory on Monday and they are now without two of their most influential and experienced big men just one game into the league season.

Coach Brian McDermott confirmed: ”Jesse has dislocated his shoulder.

“It went back in, but obviously there’s going to be some damage there.

“It could be weeks.”

That followed a major blow in Rovers’ final pre-season match.

He added: “We have lost a couple of big ones in the last two weeks.

“Losing Craig Kopczak last week against Wakefield in the warm-up was a big one for us.

“He is one of our leaders and a senior guy.

“If we’ve lost Jesse for a number of weeks that’s going to be a hit as well.”

Ex-NRL centre Joey Leilua, who joined Rovers a week ago, could make his debut in next Monday’s blockbuster home clash with Leigh Centurions.

McDermott said another of last week’s signings, ex-Leeds Rhinos forward Adam Cuthbertson, was due to play against York, but missed out owing to a stomach bug.

Other than the injury, McDermott was pleased with Rovers’ first competitive performance.

“We are going to find out a little bit about each other early in the year,” he said.

“There’s clearly things we are going to get better at and fix and work on and you want to do that as early as you can.

“While we want to win, I don’t mind that we were a little off or a little bit scratchy.

“We got a good workout and we found out a lot about ourselves after that performance.

“I thought we got a bit soft after about 65 minutes - we started bouncing about looking for off-loads and running sideways.

“It’s good that happened because we can fix that up.

“There’s a few things we can work on and get rid of or improve, but we still came away with a good win.”