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Leeds Rhinos head coach Richard Agar laments the loss of six forwards and gives update on Harry Newman and David Fusitu’a

Leeds Rhinos will have to do without six of their forwards for the West Yorkshire derby against Wakefield Trinity tomorrow night.

The Rhinos haven’t won a Super League game just yet with defeats to Warrington Wolves, Wigan Warriors and Catalans Dragons making them zero from three fixtures.

They will be up against a Wakefield side that has yet to win a game also, but head coach Richard Agar is having to do it tough.

One of those forwards out will be Alex Mellor who suffered a nasty looking neck injury in defeat to Catalans, but Agar has revealed that a neck injury was cleared.

“He’s alright, he’s on concussion protocols at the moment,” Agar said.

“The immediate worry was around his neck and subsequently that got cleared pretty quickly.

“He got knocked out and it’s the second time in his career that he’s got knocked out so he knows the recovery around it.”

Mellor is just one of six forwards out with the Leeds boss lamenting the problems facing his side.

“We’ve got a number of forwards out, Sam Walters is making good progress so is Tom Holroyd who is starting to getting towards match fitness again.

“James Donaldson has got a neck issue and it’s just not freed up enough to get him back in the side.

“Richie Myler had his surgery and is on the road to recovery, we’ve got a timescale of about ten weeks.

“Richie has been historically a good healer so we will do our best to shave a little bit of time off that.

“We’ve got six forwards out, Muizz Mustapha did his ankle against Bradford.”

Agar will, however, have David Fusitu’a, Harry Newman and Rhyse Martin back.

“They will be back in, it was a week too soon for Harry last week – we needed more high speed running into him and wanted to throw him back in without any serious risk to his hamstring.

“David Fusitu’a wasn’t quite right last week but they’ve brought a great energy to training and some quality.

“We’ve had a tough little run of results, we’ve had a few players out of the first 17.

“Rhyse is back too from his trip down under to take care of his family issues so we’ve got some welcome returnees.”

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