Wakefield Trinity’s Craig Huby ruled out for up to four months due to shoulder injury

Huby suffered a dislocated shoulder in Trinity’s home defeat by St Helens on February 10 and could need to undergo reconstructive surgery.

The fresh injury came in his first game of the season, after he had recovered from a knee problem.

It is a huge blow for the player and for Trinity who are facing mounting injury woes in the pack ahead of Thursday’s visit of Catalans Dragons.

“It looks like he will need a reconstruction,” coach Chris Chester confirmed of the 32-year-old former Castleford Tigers and Huddersfield Giants forward.

“He goes to see the specialist again at the back end of this week, but it’s looking like surgery.

“That could mean to three to four months out of action.

“We’d just got him back from a knee issue and we lost him again.

“It’s hard on Chubbs [Huby] and it really hurt us that interchange as he’d only played I think 10 minutes.

“We lost Chubbs, but also lost Kirmo [Danny Kirmond] so that had a big effect on us at the time with the interchanges.”

Pauli Pauli is still out of action due to knee damage suffered in pre-season and hooker Tyler Randell is on the long-term casualty list with a shoulder problem.

James Batchelor, another pack man, missed the Saints defeat because of damage to a knee, but Chester is confident Trinity have a strong enough squad to cope with their early-season injury crisis.

“We gave Keegan Hirst and Jordan Crowther a hit-out at the weekend in a reserves game and I thought both those two were excellent,” he added.

“One of those two will play this weekend as a direct replacement for Chubbs.

“Who it is yet I’m not too sure, but they both did exceptionally well in that reserve game.

“We’re fortunate in that we have some really good competition for places there.”

Chester revealed both Kirmond (biceps injury) and Batchelor are racing against time to be fit for this week’s game.

He said: “Kirmo is touch and go.

“We’ll make a call on him on Wednesday morning at the team-run.

“James Batchelor, again we’ll make a call on him at the team-run.

“Pauli Pauli’s been training, but it might come a week too soon for him.

“We’ve lost Tyler and Chubbs and are down on a few numbers but we’ve a big enough squad to cover those four, five blokes that could potentially be missing.”

It is far from ideal preparation to face Catalans who have one of the biggest and most physical packs in Betfred Super League.

Trinity will be hunting their first win of the year and Chester stressed: “We’ve just got to make sure we’re desperate on Thursday night.

“I thought we got a great response against St Helens and got beat by what I think is probably the best team in the competition and will be there or thereabouts again this year.

“We need to be a little bit more clinical against Catalans and finish teams off a bit better.

“If we keep turning up with that attitude we’ll win more than we lose.”