OTHER SPORT

SECRECY THE PLAN FOR NOBLE

REPLACEMENT: Noble will leave Leeds guessing till last minute

Tuesday October 2,2007

By Martin Richards

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(0)

WIGAN coach Brian Noble has identified the replacement for Mark Calderwood but will leave Leeds guessing for as long as he can before Friday’s final eliminator at Headingley.

Winger Calderwood, whose second-half hat-trick at Bradford set the Warriors’ play-off bandwagon rolling, broke his ankle as he fell awkwardly in shepherding the ball to safety under pressure from Gareth Raynor, in the 21-18 win at Hull.

Calderwood, 25, would have relished a return to Leeds, where he scored 106 tries in 143 appearances over five seasons in a Rhinos shirt, and Noble admits they are hardly well off for outside backs following Chris Ashton’s move to rugby union.

Centre Darrell Goulding is an option to come in for Calderwood and Noble might even take a chance on youngster Nicky Stanton, a winger who has run in 20 tries for the Senior Academy.

Noble had two pieces of good news to temper the loss of Calderwood. Kiwi prop Iafeta Palea’aesina, who missed most of the Hull match after picking up a dead leg in his first carry of the ball, is fit to play on Friday.

And former Leeds hooker Shane Millard was told yesterday he had no case to answer, after being put on report by referee Steve Ganson for an alleged high and late tackle on Hull scrum-half Matthew Head.

Noble said: “The news about Mark is disappointing. I feel for him. He has been part and parcel of the last six or seven weeks and has been doing some special things for us.

“Unfortunately, we can’t open up a new can of Mark Calderwoods, so we’ll have to go with someone else and I’m pretty excited about what that person can achieve for us in this team.

“It’s well documented that we had a skinny squad at the start of the year. We haven’t got a great deal of depth but I’m delighted where we’re at.

“We’re in the final eliminator and we want to go a little bit further. The good news is that everyone else is healthy.”

Millard added: “It’s a relief to be able to play. The incident looked worse than it actually was. I’m not that type of player and I’ve never been in bother before.”

Leeds, who have lost three times to Wigan this season, hope to draw on their experiences of 2004 when they bounced back from defeat in their qualifying semi-final to beat Bradford in the Grand Final.

Bradford’s Shontayne Hape has been named in the New Zealand squad to play Australia in Wellington on October 14, the day before the Kiwis, under new coach Gary Kemble, head to the UK for a three-Test series against Great Britain.

Hape, who only recently made his Bulls’ comeback from knee reconstruction, is recalled along with Warrington-bound back row Louis Anderson and Paul Whatuira of Huddersfield.