Leeds Rhinos star set to see specialist after injury

Leeds Rhinos star James Bentley has had an understated start to the Super League season. He has been impressive and combative in the middle of the field but hasn’t gotten the plaudits.

However, he paid the price for his ‘don’t give an inch’ style of play on Thursday with a head injury which will see him miss the game against Warrington Wolves on Friday.

He is also set to see a specialist to assess the head injury as Rohan Smith himself confirmed saying:

“Yeah, James is actually going to see the consultant this afternoon to get an update and be assessed there so we’ll know some more after today. He came through pretty well after the game, no sort of immediate headaches or those sort of normal symptoms which was really good. Obviously the best of the worst case.

“His health will be number one in the short term. It’s over six months now, I think, since the last incident. That’s one of the time frames that they look at as far as grading the return to play. We’ll be guided by the experts after he sees them today.”

Asked if he would have a chance of playing against Huddersfield Giants in the game after, Smith said: “Possibly, I’d be surprised if he’s back into his return to play and ready to go by then, but again I’ll be guided by what the consultant says and then in conjunction with our medical team here.”

Leeds Rhinos injury update

The Leeds Rhinos boss also confirmed that Harry Newman was likely to play against Warrington after suffering a nasty cut:

“No, everyone else has come through the game pretty well. Harry had some stitches in his lip and he’s recovering well. So we don’t have any other real concerns across the rest of our group.

“Harry seems to be recovering well, he got moving today in some field sessions so he’s taken a decent bang on the lip but I think the mouth particularly heals very quickly and there was a tremendous looking stitch job that was done, it looked very clean and tidy the day after the game and now it’s just a matter of settling down and some of the swelling going out of his lip.

“He understands it’s a combat sport and that’s the price you pay sometimes. He’s a tough young kid and he’s been making the right noises about playing this week. We’ll go up to Thursday and make a call on that. It’s looking like he’s going to be right to play.”

Smith did confirm that David Fusitu’a wasn’t ready to return:

“Yeah, he won’t be playing this week. He’s going in the right direction now. He’s got some more work done but he won’t be quite ready so we’ll be hoping come the week after the Challenge Cup that he’ll be flying into that week and ready to go.”