One of Leeds Rhinos’ brightest young stars has suffered a potentially season-ending injury blow.
Teenage half-back George Brown could be sidelined for the rest of this year after suffering knee damage during last Friday’s Challenge Cup defeat at Wakefield Trinity.
The 19-year-old made his debut this season and has featured four times so far, including as starting stand-off in Rhinos’ past two games.
Speaking at his weekly preview press conference today, Leeds coach Brad Arthur revealed: “Poor kid, it’s his meniscus and he has had an operation during the week.
“It could be quite lengthy; at this stage they are talking four or five months. I am not sure if he will play again this year, that will depend on his rehab.
“There’s every possibility he might be right by the end of the year, but there’s certainly no rush with it.
“He is only young and we want to make sure we rehab him properly and give him every opportunity to strengthen it.”
The team boss stressed: “He can work on other areas of his game, put a bit of work into his upper body and get a bit thicker and stronger.
“He has certainly shown he is tough enough to handle it physically and now he can put a bit more weight on up top. That will be his mentality at the moment.
“It’s one of those where you can try and rush them through and push it. If he was 30-odd and getting towards the end of his career you might take a few chances with it, but he’s young and has a lot of time in front of him. We are investing in the future and doing the right thing by him.”
Brown is one of only three specialist halves in Rhinos’ senior squad, along with Brodie Croft and Jake Connor, but Arthur said they won’t look to bring a replacement during his layoff.
“We’re not really interested in that,” he insisted. “We’ve got Jack Bird, we looked at his highlight reel today and he had the number six jersey on in some of his NRL games.
“He is more than capable and Chank [Chris Hankinson] has done a good job for us there.
“If we get stuck in that position we’ve got guys who have been in our system and know exactly how we want to play. We can simplify their role to be able to fill in.”
Croft has not played since Leeds Rhinos’ win over Hull KR in Las Vegas three weeks ago, but has been cleared to return in Sunday’s game at Hull FC.
Arthur said: “He trained really well on Wednesday. He was very close last week, but we were just beaten by the circumstances – we only had the opportunity for one training session on a five-day turnaround and it wasn’t much of a session.
“It wasn’t enough to test him and it wasn’t the right thing to put him out there, not knowing 100 per cent he was good to go.”
