New Zealand begin their tour of England on Friday night when they take on the Super League champions Leeds in their warm up match for the Test series against Steve McNamara’s men next month. The match is live on Premier Sports in the UK and it should be a good occasion.
This will be an opportunity for the Headingley faithful to finally say goodbye to their three legendary players Kevin Sinfield, Jamie Peacock and Kylie Leuluai. Only the latter will be playing in the match but all three will be there to add extra meaning to the occasion.
Although New Zealand have named a pretty strong starting line up you would think their main objective going into this match is to make sure that all of their squad get some minutes on the field to acclimatise to conditions ahead of the big matches.
Leeds have named their side for this match and they are without a number of star players. Kevin Sinfield, Jamie Peacock, Ryan Hall, Kallum Watkins and Zak Hardaker will all miss the game. Adrian Morley and Ali Lauitiiti get special dispensation to feature for the Rhinos while youngsters Ashton Golding, Ash Handley and Josh Walters start the game.
New Zealand have named their line up for the match too and although the likes of Shaun Johnson, Benji Marshall and Kieran Foran aren’t here due to injury they still have a strong looking core to their team. Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Jason Nightingale, Dean Whare and Shaun Kenny-Dowall are all in the back line while Jesse Bromwich and Isaac Luke are in the forwards.
Although there are other things to get out of this game other than the result I do think this will be a pretty competitive match for long periods in terms of how seriously the game is taken.
I don’t think it will be competitive on the scoreboard though. I think Leeds are missing too much of their spine and they go into the match off a long, hard season where they have achieved everything they can and motivation will be low and I can see them struggling to get up to the physicality of the game.
New Zealand will want to send a marker out to the England team and management who will no doubt be watching the game and I fully expect them to do a comfortable job on the Super League champions especially as they are allowed 19 interchanges in this match.
Back New Zealand (-22) to beat Leeds for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Stan James
Blog RL YTD: +7.29pts
