Luke Briscoe relishing his ‘wing battle’ with brother Tom Briscoe at Leeds Rhinos

Luke Briscoe has played in 10 of Rhinos’ last 11 games since elder brother Tom suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury 12 months ago.

Though Tom is now available and was named in last week’s initial 21-man squad, Luke retained his place against Huddersfield Giants and scored a vital try in Leeds’ 27-26 win.

Agar fielded an unchanged starting 13 from Rhinos’ last match before the coronavirus break, a 66-12 rout of Toronto Wolfpack in March and the only alteration was on the bench where debutant Kruise Leeming replaced Callum McLelland.

But forward James Donaldson suffered a back injury against Giants and with Leeds falling below par for an hour of the game, it could be a different story for the visit of St Helens in three days’ time.

Rhinos have genuine competition for places and Luke Briscoe said: “I spoke to Rich before [Sunday] and he said because of how we finished he couldn’t really drop us or change the team about, so that kept my confidence pretty high.

“We’re battling for the wings now [Tom is available] and we will see how it goes week by week. We are battling for the same position and we will see who wins at the end of the week.”

There will be no ill feelings on the part of whoever isn’t picked, according to Luke.

He said: “We both want each other to play, if the other doesn’t play we’ll be gutted for him. We just want each other to do as well as possible.”

Tom Briscoe was runner-up to left-wing Ash Handley in Rhinos’ 2019 player of the year awards and is unlikely to be out of the side for long, but Agar is expected to make full use of his squad as Rhinos face another 15 league matches and at least one Coral Challenge Cup tie before the middle of November.

With the short turnarounds and three games in seven days at times it is going to be tough,” Luke predicted.

“You’d think there’s going to be some changes in the team to keep us fresh and rolling around.”

Rhinos struggled, individually and as a team, to get into the game against Giants before a storming finish.

Briscoe recalled: “It was good to get back out there.

“I didn’t start off too well, but once I got into the game it was better.

“We all had a sloppy start, until the last 20 minutes really.

“Once we got going in that last 20 minutes we showed what we can do.

“If we do that throughout the whole game we are a dangerous team.”

Rhinos were 26-6 down, but scored four tries in the final 12 minutes to send the game into extra-time.

Briscoe grabbed the second of those with a spectacular diving touchdown and admitted: “It is always good to get over in the corner, but a lot of it comes from the middles getting us into positions and I just have to finish them.”

The win lifted Rhinos three places into top spot ahead of this weekend, but they will need to be more consistent against Saints.

“We have to start and finish how we finished that game and if we do we will be a tough team to handle,” Briscoe said.

“To have five months off and come back, it was a bit of a shock to the system,

“Getting those minutes and that good game time in, it has got us back into it and we’ve got something to build on now.”

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