Leeds Rhinos' Matt Frawley makes 'challenging' admission, hails 'positive' competition for half-back roles

Frawley returned from a three-game layoff against Salford Red Devils last week and is set to keep his place for Friday’s visit of Huddersfield Giants. The Australian number seven missed Rhinos’ Betfred Challenge Cup defeat at St Helens because of concussion and was not selected for the next two games, against Wigan Warriors and Warrington Wolves, as coach Brad Arthur went with Jake Connor alongside Brodie Croft in the halves.

He was recalled after Croft picked up a hamstring injury against Warrington which will keep him off the field for the rest of this month and insisted: “It was good to be back out there - it is hard to get back in. Jake has done a really good job, Crofty is a great player and Lachie [Miller] is back now and I think that is a positive for the squad. He [Arthur] is going to pick the players who are in form and doing the best job so I think it has been challenging personally, but the best thing for the squad.”

Arthur has praised Frawley - who featured for Rhinos’ reserves against St Helens two weeks ago - for his attitude to the setback and the scrum-half vowed the only way to respond is by working hard and being professional. “I have been in that scenario a fair few times in my career so nothing really changes in terms of my preparation,” he said. “I prepare the same every week and if I am playing that’s good, but if not, I’m not going to do anything different. It is part of rugby league and it’s healthy for the squad.”

With Croft set to miss Friday’s visit of Frawley’s former club Huddersfield Giants and the home game against Hull KR seven days later, the scrum-half accepts it’s up to him to ensure he hangs on to his spot when all the play-makers are available. “I don’t know exactly what Crofty’s timeline is, but I’ve got a couple of weeks there and then we’ll see how things go when he comes back,” he added.

Rhinos will be favourites to pick up a second successive win this week, against a team still looking for their first points of the campaign and Frawley reckons they need to build on the defensive effort they put in against Salford, when they were down to 12 men - with Keenan Palasia and then Mikolaj Oledzki in the sin-bin - for a quarter of the match.

“It was a bit patchy at stages, but I think in the second half we put some decent footy together and it was good to get the win,” he reflected. “The most pleasing thing was keeping them to zero, going down to 12 men wasn’t ideal, but I think we responded well to that. We’ve talked about having a better response when things go wrong and I think we did that.”

Rhinos managed only one try in the first half, but crossed four times after the break. “I thought they defended well in the first half,” Frawley admitted. “But we wore them down in the second half and got some rewards for it.”