Liam Sutcliffe aims to be central figure at Leeds Rhinos

Sutcliffe regained the No 4 jersey in pre-season and has played eight times at centre so far, along with two starts as full-back and one in each of the half-back positions. He made his return from a two-match injury lay-off at centre in the win over Wakefield Trinity 12 days ago and that’s where he wants to remain for the second half of the campaign. Tom Briscoe and Harry Newman, who are both on the injury list, have also played there, along with Jack Broadbent, teenager Max Simpson, second-rowers Alex Mellor and Rhyse Martin and recent signing Zak Hardaker.

“Nothing has changed with me, even though we’ve got a different coach,” Sutcliffe insisted. “I still want to play centre; it is always good to have competition for places, but that’s where I want to play for the rest of the year so, hopefully, I can do that.”

The 27-year-old, who is Rhinos’ longest-serving player, featured in the first 11 games, but was forced off the field early in April’s win over Toulouse Olympique when wear and tear from a persistent knee problem finally took its toll.

“I came through it all good, no issues,” he said of his comeback against Trinity. “I am all right, the knee had been bothering me a bit here and there and I don’t know if it was the build-up of games over Easter.

“I’d been getting managed sometimes in training and, obviously, to have to play so many games in so few days, it kind of caught up with me. It was a case of doing little bits of rehab’ on it and speaking to the physios and getting a plan going forward. It was causing me little issues, but I only missed two games so it wasn’t anything major and I was happy to get back out there and into it.”

Rhinos’ squad is looking much healthier now than a few weeks ago and Sutcliffe added: “We’ve been unlucky with injuries this year, with so many major ones at the start.

“Hopefully, now we can start to get bodies back slowly but surely and have a pretty strong squad going into the second half of the season, which is going to cause competition for places.”

After a break last weekend, Rhinos are back in action on Friday, away to Warrington Wolves who are eighth in Betfred Super League, two places and only one point above Rhinos.

It could be a pivotal fixture in Rhinos’ season, but Sutcliffe insisted: “I’ve not even looked at the table. Regardless of positions, it is always a big game going over to Warrington.

“It has been like that since I started playing and I think the way they played against St Helens last time out was pretty strong. They will want to back that up and the same with us; we had a decent performance against Wakefield and we want to build on that and put a good performance in. We want to be one of those teams who can go game on game and get on a bit of a winning streak, instead of one win and a couple of games off. Hopefully, we can start by getting back-to-back wins this weekend.”

The trip to HJ Stadium is the first of six in succession on the road for Rhinos, but Sutcliffe added: “We haven’t spoken about that. We will take it game by game and see how we go. We just want to build on performances and build on what we’re doing in training.

“There’s no point looking at what we’ve got after Warrington; we’ve just got to focus on this game and that’s what we’ll be doing every week.”