Leeds Rhinos star opens up on being forced to play wing for Great Britain

Blake Austin is known as one of the best halfbacks in the Betfred Super League.

In his first season with the Warrington Wolves in 2019 he set the world on fire especially in the first half of the campaign.

After three strong years with the Wire, he went on to join Leeds Rhinos ahead of 2022 where he helped the Rhinos to the Grand Final.

However, there is a moment of his career that always gets brought up and that is the fact that he started on the wing for Great Britain in an ill-fated tour of Australia with Wayne Bennett’s Great Britain side.

It is a moment that gets talked about a lot and spelt the end of Bennett’s time in charge.

Speaking on the Trot the Egg podcast, Austin opened up on the difficult situation he was in:

“Yeah I did and obviously that’s all anyone wants to speak about, everyone has their opinions on that.

“By that stage of the tour it was either me or Lachlan Coote. Cootey has played fullback so would be better under the high ball, wingers jobs these days is coming in and having 20 carries into the meat of the pack.

“I was pretty confident that I would be better suited for that.

“I don’t like that people speak about it as if it was my fault. If I had have been given a chance in the halves maybe it would have been different and I would have played better and everyone would be happy with me being an international.

“Look I’ll finish my career with two Great Britain caps that I’ll be proud of and that jersey will hang with pride for many years to come”