Leeds Rhinos news: loan pledge, new Mikolaj Oledzki timeframe, Jake Connor injury update & winger departs

The team boss says he plans to give Leeds’ own youngsters an opportunity before considering loan deals, despite being without four forwards - three of them front-rowers - for tomorrow’s visit of Salford Red Devils. Mikolaj Oledzki will have an operation tomorrow on the fractured cheekbone and damaged eye socket he suffered in last week’s loss to St Helens.

Tom Holroyd has had surgery on a wrist injury, Tom Nicholson-Watton is recovering from a stress fracture of a foot and second-row Morgan Gannon will miss another two games with an ankle problem. As a result, 18-year-old back-rower Presley Cassell will make his debut off the bench tomorrow and forward Ben Littlewood, with just one first team appearance to his name, is also in Rhinos’ initial squad.

Sam Eseh had a spell on loan from Wigan Warriors last year when Rhinos had similar injury problems in their middle-unit, but asked at his weekly preview press conference today (Thursday) if they’d look to do something similar now, Arthur stressed: “Not at the minute. When we had good health and a lot of players available, a month ago, we were thinking it would be nice to give Presley an opportunity. So when these opportunities come along, you probably need to back your system.

“If we run out of troops we might have to [consider loans], but we’ve still got Ben Littlewood who has come back from injury and had a couple of [reserves] games now. There might be an opportunity for him and there’s some blokes in the academy squad, whether they are ready or not. We just want to make sure we exhaust all our avenues of what we’ve got here first, then we’ll see.”

There were fears Oledzki would be sidelined for up to eight weeks, but Arthur hopes he’ll be back sooner. “He’s having an operation tomorrow, he’ll have a couple of plates inserted and it’s four-six weeks from there,” he said. “He is pretty smashed up, but it’s not like a soft tissue injury where he has to rehab it. He has to wait for it to heal and then he’s ready to play. Mik’s pretty tough, but we certainly won’t be putting him out there until he’s right to play.”

Nobody was charged over the incident which caused Oledzki’s injury, with the RFL’s match review panel describing it as an accident. Asked about that, Arthur stressed: “I don’t make the rules. All I know is it is up to the defenders not to make contact with the opposition’s head. You take what you like from that.”

Arthur revealed Holroyd, who was suspended against Saints, suffered his injury two weeks ago in the win at Hull KR. He said: “We didn’t really know about it until after the game. He just said he had a sore wrist - it happened during the game and he battled on and played through it. It’s a credit to him and the team - they are putting their bodies on the line for each other.”

Scrum-half Jake Connor picked up what Arthur described as “a knock” in last week’s defeat, but the coach revealed he has been given the all-clear for tomorrow. He confirmed: “He was a bit sore early in the week, like all the boys were because that was a physical game. It took us a couple of days to get over it, but we’ve had training today and he’s fine.”

Meanwhile, winger Elliot Wallis has returned to Huddersfield Giants after his loan spell with Leeds and is in their squad for tomorrow’s game against Wakefield Trinity. He didn’t play a first team game for Leeds and Arthur stated: “Unfortunately it didn’t work out moving forward with the [salary] cap and all that sort of thing, but he was good. He trained well for us.”