Jack Bird will make his Leeds Rhinos debut against Hull FC, while Brodie Croft will make his return from injury.
Bird’s arrival was confirmed over a month ago, but a combination of his fitness and the form of the Rhinos, has seen him have to wait to make his first appearance in blue and amber.
But Arthur has confirmed that the recruit from Wests Tigers will be named on the bench for the trip to Hull FC, allowing Arthur to make a decision on when, and where, he deploys the Australian in the trip to the MKM Stadium.
“He hasn’t played for a long time,” Arthur said. “I think it’s been six or seven months since he’s played a game. Our expectations won’t be too high.
“The game will decide that once we’re in the flow of it. He’ll come off the bench and the game will decide what’s needed at the time or where it’s at. The situation, I can’t predict that right now. But what I do know is he can go to the centre, he can go in the halves, he can go to back row, he can go to 13. He can pretty much carve up any position for us, similar to Chank.”
On Croft, Arthur added: “He trained really well on Wednesday. It was very, very close last week, but we were just beaten by the circumstances that we only had the opportunity for one training session on the five-day turnaround and it wasn’t much of a session, so it wasn’t enough to test him.
“We’re four games into the season, so it wasn’t the right thing to put him out there, not knowing 100 per cent that he was good to go.”
It comes at a time when the Rhinos have lost young halfback Jack Brown. The teenage halfback underwent surgery due to a knee injury in the week and is now set for a long spell on the sidelines.
“It could be quite lengthy, they’re talking four or five months. I’m not sure if he will play again this year, it will just depend on his rehab. There’ certainly no rush, he’s only young and want to give him every opportunity.
“He can work on other areas of his game. He can start to put a bit of work into his upper body and get a bit thicker and stronger because he certainly showed that he was tough enough and handled it physically. But if he can just put a bit more weight on up top, that’ll be his mentality at the moment.
“It’s one of those ones where you can try and rush him through and push it and if he was 30-odd and he was getting to the end of his career, you might want to take a few chances with it.
“But he’s young and he’s got a lot of time in front of him. It’s a bit of a real blow that, isn’t it? Just Hull, obviously, on Sunday. Yeah, the effort’s been really good and they’re trying hard and I feel like they’re defending really well.”
Arthur confirmed the Rhinos would not be looking to bring in a replacement to fill Brown’s position in the squad, with Bird and Chris Hankinson both capable of playing in the halves.