Wheelchair RL: Buckingham Palace World Cup draw date for Leeds Rhinos captain James Simpson

The England player is an ambassador for next year’s World Cup and has been invited to the tournament draw which will be conducted by Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace.

It is a reunion of sorts for Simpson, a former soldier who served in Afghanistan at the same time as the Duke of Sussex.

Simpson, who lost both legs when an improvised bomb exploded while he was serving with the 1st Battalion Yorkshire Regiment, recalled: “I have crossed paths with Prince Harry a few times, without realising it, when I was in the Army.

“When I was in Afghanistan I bumped into him twice, before it was leaked he was out there.

“We were all like ‘Is that Prince Harry in the ops’ room?’. We were all saying ‘it can’t be’, but then it got leaked that he was there.”

The draw for the men’s and women’s tournaments also take place at the Palace tomorrow.

“Me and Jodie [Cunningham, an ambassador for the women’s competition] will be running a touch-footy kind of tournament outside, then we’re going to go inside for the draw,” Simpson said.

“It is going to be incredible, massive. There’s people coming in from all the countries involved, people flying in from Brazil, so it’s going to be incredible to have all those people in one place, in London, at the Palace.”

England will go into the wheelchair tournament as favourites having whitewashed Australia in a two-Test Ashes series Down Under last autumn.

“We also had the mid-season Tests against France in France, where we beat them,” Simpson said.

“France won the 2017 World Cup so we’ve beaten the Aussies and the world champions. Coming on the back of those massive wins, it sets us in good stead.

“We realise we just have to keep doing what we’re doing and make tiny adjustments and small improvements.

“We don’t have to change much, just one percenters and keep chipping away.”