Featherstone Rovers’ Brett Ferres is relishing a crack at former club Leeds Rhinos

Ferres joined Rovers last November after four seasons with Rhinos and is due to make his comeback from injury in a trial game between the dual-registration partner clubs at LD Nutrition Stadium, Post Office Road.

The 33-year-old was a Grand Final winner with Rhinos in 2017 and admitted: “I spend a lot of time with the [Leeds] boys so I am looking forward to it.

“It will be nice to get out there, pre-season is never easy and they do it tough the part-time boys, going to training on a night after work.

“They certainly put the hard yards in and work hard so it’s nice to be getting into games now. I am personally looking forward to it because it’s Leeds and I’ve just left them and it’ll be nice to go out there and hopefully do a job on them.”

Ferres will be keeping a close eye on how Rhinos fare this year. He predicted: “It will be interesting, they have let a fair few go and not much has come in.

“Whether they are right or wrong in that, we’ll see, but they’ve got some cracking young kids who can step up and do a job for them.

“I have been watching them closely, I’ve always been a bit of a Leeds fan at heart and I am looking forward to seeing how the young players go.”

Ferres will get a crack at some of those youngsters tomorrow in his comeback from surgery. He confirmed: “I had an operation, a bit of a clean out on my knee, at the back end of last year.

“I’ve been getting my body right and I think having less time to train and more time to rest will help that. I have been taking it step by step with my re-hab and cranking it up over Christmas and the new year to get ready to play.”

Rovers have had three trial games so far, drawing with Betfred Championship rivals York City Knights, putting a century of points on Valencia in Spain and then being pipped 16-14 at Super League side Hull KR last weekend.

That was an encouraging sign and Ferres said: “Pre-season has been good, we’ve worked hard. We’ve had a few little hic-ups with players being injured and having operations and we are starting to slowly get them back now.

“We’ve had some decent run-outs and it was a good experience over in Spain. The boys really enjoyed the trip and it always helps to go away and do a bit of team bonding. We’ve got a big game this week and then hopefully we’ll start the season strong.”

After battling from fifth place on the table to reach last year’s Grand Final, Rovers are third favourites, behind Leigh Centurions and London Broncos, for the league leaders’ shield and title success in 2020.

“I think the last seven weeks of the Championship last year did put a bit more pressure on us,” Ferres said. “They had a fantastic run at the end to get to the Million Pound Game so there’s a bit of expectancy that we should go well and be in and around it.

“But we’ll just go along quietly and I think that sort of stuff takes care of itself. The Championship is a really tough competition, there’s five or six teams who are up there every year and compete really hard and tough and it’s generally really close.”