'The first I'd heard of it': Leeds Rhinos’ Liam Sutcliffe comments on Hull FC rumours

Sutcliffe had a spell on the transfer list in 2020, but signed a new long-term contract in February last year and insists he is happy at Rhinos.

The 27-year-old centre has scored seven tries in 17 games this term, but some media reports this month suggested he was set for a move to Rhinos’ Betfred Super League rivals.

“I saw the rumours on Twitter,” Sutcliffe said.

“I am not too sure how or where they have come from.

“I have still got another two years [on his Leeds deal].

“When it was on Twitter, that was the first I’d heard of it.”

Sutcliffe made his debut in 2013 and has played 213 games for his home city club.

That makes him Rhinos’ longest-serving player and he stressed: “It’s good at the moment, the last few games especially - personally and how the team has been going.

“It is free-flowing and I think everyone’s enjoying how it’s going at the moment.

“If you look across the team, there’s some good footballers in there.

“I think everyone’s kind of excelling at a bit of free-flowing rugby.

“You can see in how people are performing that it probably does suit us.”

After the worst start to a season in the club’s history, Leeds are now knocking on the door of the play-offs.

They have won three of their last four games, all of those victories against teams who were in the top six at the time and travel to third-placed Catalans Dragons on Saturday.

Last week’s 42-12 hammering of Wigan Warriors, when Sutcliffe scored the opening try, was Leeds’ best display of the season so far and he is confident they can back it up this weekend.

“Obviously it was a good performance,” he reflected.

“But we don’t get too carried away with the score or whatever, we just want to keep building.

“Before the Toulouse game [two weeks ago] we were building pretty well.

“That was different circumstances, but before it we had set good standards and the tone for how we want to play.

“Hopefully we can keep building and get another win on Saturday.

“It is a massive game, I think there’s four or five teams going for the six so it’s all pretty close.

“We are all on a similar amount of points so fingers crossed we get a result and other results go our way.

“But if not, there’s still a good handful of games left we can strive for and we’ll see how we go towards the end of that.”

Sutcliffe travelled to Toulouse, but wasn’t able to play in the 20-6 defeat because of illness.

“I was ill going over,” he revealed.

“I didn’t feel too cracking, I tried to give it as much time as possible.

“Game day, I spent pretty much the whole time in bed, just trying to shake it off, but I didn’t.

“Hopefully this time, especially with us going in and out in a day, I’ll be all right.”