“He’s still three to four weeks away and there are some injuries you just can’t take a risk with,” Raper said.St Helens have Barry Ward back in training for their semi-final against Leeds on Saturday. “He’s started light training after his knee injury, but it would be a gamble for us to use him,” the Saints coach, Ian Millward, said.Millward has definitely ruled out Keiron Cunningham and Tommy Martyn, although his track record in such matters means that Leeds half expect to face them. On the other hand, Millward predicted that Sean Long would be fit, even though he is thought to be struggling with a hamstring injury.Long’s younger brother, Karl, has left London Broncos after playing just 10 minutes against Castleford on Sunday His fellow debutant, Jamie Fielden, has also left the club.. In one important sense, Martin Gleeson will be going home for Saturday’s Powergen Challenge Cup semi-final against Leeds. His rise since then has been meteoric, with a Grand Final victory and Great Britain caps to his credit, not to mention a loser’s medal from last year’s Cup final, but he gives much of the credit to the grounding in the game he got at the McAlpine Stadium.”I’ve got some good memories from there,” he says. “I still like a lot of the people there and it’s a great ground.

My time there under Tony Smith’s coaching taught me a lot.”On his first return to the McAlpine as a St Helens player, 10 days ago, Gleeson was confined to the stand, recovering from elbow surgery to remove a piece of floating bone, but he was not unduly surprised when his old team beat his current one.”It was just a matter of time before they started winning matches, because Tony is an excellent coach. Something like this was coming towards the end of the relegation season, but we couldn’t quite catch the teams ahead of us.”At the end of the 2001 season, with Huddersfield doomed to demotion from Super League, plenty of other clubs had identified Gleeson as a player who had no business dropping into the Northern Ford Premiership and, attached to the club though he was, he was ambitious enough to know that he would have to move on.”As soon as the season finished and we played our last game, I started to get a few messages on my phone from different coaches of Super League clubs. Ian Millward was one of them and I phoned him back.”I suppose I had a bit of a choice, but St Helens were the ones for me. Mind you,” he says, citing the case of one of Saturday’s most dangerous opponents, “people know that Keith Senior has a big fend, but knowing about it and stopping him doing it are two entirely different things.”Gleeson knows all about the strengths of Senior and his Leeds team-mates, because his comeback, after a five-match absence, was the defeat by the Rhinos last Friday.”It’s a turn-around from last year, when we were in great form and beat Leeds very comfortably in the semi-final at the JJB. Leeds have been very consistent this time and our form hasn’t been the greatest, so it’s a different sort of challenge.”We let ourselves down in the final against Wigan at Murrayfield last year, so I really want to go to Cardiff.

I’ve never been there, but I’m told that it’s a great venue.”The country’s only unbeaten side are barring the way and it did not need last weekend’s defeat to show Gleeson what a formidable barrier they could be.”They have brought a lot of young lads through this year and made some key signings, so the blend is a lot better than it was. Kevin Sinfield’s captaincy has also given them a lot.”We knew it was going to be hard last weekend and they played really well on the day. We’ll see if they can maintain the same sort of consistency this week.”. Professional rugby union cannot afford the loss of quality administrators – heaven knows, it is a sport of lions led by donkeys – and the sudden death of David Tyler, the former Bristol captain and coach, at the distressingly early age of 56 can only have a negative effect on the game as it struggles for economic and competitive stability.