Matt Parcell: Headingley homecoming’s been earmarked for Leeds Rhinos return

My ear ‘blew up’ after the game at Salford so I went into hospital on the Monday night to get it sorted out, but it didn’t go real well.

I had to go back on the Tuesday, to see a different doctor, and she fixed it up well. I had surgery on Tuesday and that did the trick.

It should have been something easy and basic, but it turned into a bit of a debacle.

It probably shouldn’t have happened, it was a basic procedure, but it got complicated.

I had a two-hour surgery on Tuesday and that did the trick. We thought about playing against Saints on Friday, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

We didn’t know how it was going to go and I didn’t want to go out there and, after a minute, have to come off so we went with the safe option.

I was back at hospital on the weekend and the doctor took all the stitches out. It is a lot better now so I am hoping to be back tonight.

It was a strange week, but I want to say thanks to everyone for their best wishes.

I got a lot of messages so that was really good and much appreciated.

The funny thing is, on Monday I went for scans on my eye which I took a bang to in the game at Salford and the ear was just a secondary thing, but it turned into the main thing.

The eye’s all sweet, but the ear gave me some problems!

It was really disappointing to miss out last week after I felt I went well in the Salford game.

I wanted to keep that momentum going. I feel like I have had a really good pre-season but, in the first two games, it felt like when I was on the field we just tackled the whole time and, if you are tackling more, it takes it out of you a bit.

In the Salford game I felt like we finally got some ball and I could get back to some good form, then this happens, but that’s out of my control.

It is a bit frustrating because I felt like I got back to some really good form against Salford, but that’s the way it goes.

You just have to roll with the punches and, hopefully, I can get back and play well against Wakefield.

Brad Dwyer is doing a great job at the moment and playing really well. We both play a bit differently, but defensively we are trying to work on the same things so we can work on that together in training.

When he is in there he is doing a really good job in games and that’s good for me, it makes me want to play better, so I think it is working well for both of us.

Everyone in the squad has been looking forward to tonight’s home game. It seems like a long time since we last played at Headingley.

The stadium is looking great and it’s going to be a really good place to play when all the work’s finished.

It was before, when I came over here in 2017 it was just really loud and the atmosphere was really good.

That’s what you want, those are the stadiums you want to play at. It makes you play really good footy.

Whoever you are, you want to play at home – that’s where you feel you play your best and obviously having four away games in a row wasn’t ideal, but I think we’ve improved a lot from the first game and we want to show our fans what we are all about.

At Salford we showed what we can do with the ball and last Friday again, in patches.

In the end that was a very frustrating night and it makes this week very important. We want to pick up a win and get on a roll.