Shaun Wane named a huge 40-man England squad but despite this there were some big omissions from the squad including Super League’s top try scorer Josh Charnley.
But one of the biggest was Huddersfield Giants star Jake Connor.
Connor notched 33 assists in the 2022 Super League season which was more than anyone else but wasn’t enough to see him feature in the World Cup.
He has yet again been left out of the England squad and speaking to BBC Radio Leeds, Connor admitted he didn’t expect to be picked.
Asked if he was disappointed: “Not really. I don’t expect to be. Obviously I haven’t played rugby in a long time, I thought my form was good last year but my focus this year is just to get back to how I’ve been playing in the past, stringing some good games together and that’ll come in time.”
Meanwhile, his coach Ian Watson was shocked by his omission:
“He is an international player, obviously he has not been named in the squad but he is a top end international player who can cause international teams problems.
“The big thing for us, he is playing to the team’s strengths and when jumps out of the system the boys react to him and if it works it work and if it doesn’t he just falls back into the system.
“That is a great strength of a player to play in and out of a system.”
Asked if he thinks Connor will ever play for England again, Watson said he hopes so and said Connor is one of the top five players in the country:
“You’d hope so. He was probably one of the best players in the competition last year so not getting picked for the World Cup last year was obviously a surprise.
“That’s not my job to select the international team. But for me he is definitely in our top five players in this country and should be in the international squad for me but like I say that is not my job.”
