Kruise Leeming column: Leeds Rhinos in good shape but Castleford Tigers are always a threat

Leeds Rhinos haven’t had many easy games against Castleford Tigers, at home or away and I’m not expecting one on Thursday.

It would be foolish of us to look at where they are in the league table or read anything into their recent results and we won’t be making that mistake.

We don’t want to be shocked when they come out firing, which is exactly what they will do. We don’t have an easy game against them because it is a rivalry; there’ll be a big crowd, it is on Sky and, on top of that, they will want to pick up their first win.

We know it is going to be a tough game and we need to make sure we turn up with our heads on.

For us, it is about making sure everyone’s on the same page and we get that cohesion between the spine that we saw a bit of when we scored some points against Wakefield last week.

You can practice that as much as you want in training, but there’s only so much you can do; it’s in the games when it really comes together.

We need to build on what we did against St Helens and Wakefield and get on a bit of a roll and keep ticking off two points.

If we win, we’ll be on six points from five games and - while we wanted to win them all - I think that would be a good start and one of the better ones we’ve had since I’ve been at the club.

In previous years the start to the season has let us down. It’s what you do in the opening games that allows you to be a bit flexible towards the back end and rest players if you want to.

We haven’t been able to do that. Last year we were playing catch up and fighting to get into the top-six and every game in the second half of the year was a must-win. That was because we dropped so many points in the opening 10 rounds.

This year if we can keep ticking off wins and picking up two points most weeks it will stand us in good stead towards the business end.

It is good to be back in the 21-man squad this week. When I hurt my foot against St Helens, I feared the worst.

I was out for a while when I did something similar last season, so to be unavailable for only one game was a bonus.

I am good now, the injury has come along nicely and everything has gone well with it. It was a little bit of a scare, but I am over it now and ready to go.

I’ve done some training on it and I feel confident about it. I am not a great watcher at the best of times - I just want to be out there playing - so last Friday wasn’t ideal for me, but the main thing is we got the win against a stubborn Wakefield side.

There were some positive signs and it was good to see Harry Newman and James Bentley back.

They have worked super-hard to get their bodies right and they both looked brilliant. Bentos had a spell at nine and I thought he was good.

What you try to get out of your first couple of games back is just giving your lungs a good blowout and I think they did that.

From a team point of view, to keep a team to nil is always pleasing. Wakefield have been struggling to score, but they had spells on our line and we did a good job keeping them out.

It took us a while to get into our stride on attack, but we got there in the end, which is what matters.

I want to give a big shout out to the grounds staff at Headingley and everyone else who helped get the game on after all the snow overnight.

The facilities at Leeds are the best and the grounds people are exactly the same. They worked really hard, round the clock, to get that game on; it was a massive job shifting all that snow off the pitch and the surrounding areas and it was to our advantage the game went ahead.