{"id":397052,"date":"2026-01-29T15:08:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397052\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T15:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:08:07","slug":"leeds-rhinos-james-mcdonnell-to-miss-super-league-kick-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397052\/","title":{"rendered":"Leeds Rhinos&#8217; James McDonnell to miss Super League kick-off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leeds Rhinos have been dealt a blow before the new Super League season with James McDonnell ruled out for up to six weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 26-year-old forward sustained an ankle injury in Saturday&#8217;s warm-up game against Bradford Bulls that will keep him for at least a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McDonnell, who featured in every Leeds game last season and was named in the Super League Dream Team, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/rugby-league\/articles\/ckgj1y8lpdvo\" class=\"ssrcss-eyo3xn-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">will depart<\/a> for National Rugby League (NRL) side Perth Bears at the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Promising centre Max Simpson, 21, will miss the entire season after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury in the game against the Bulls, which was the departing Cameron Smith&#8217;s testimonial for the club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leeds, who face Widnes in the third round of the Challenge Cup a week on Saturday, start their Super League campaign at Leigh Leopards on 13 February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Captain Ash Handley also came off during Saturday&#8217;s game with a groin injury and is expected to be out for two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leeds Rhinos have been dealt a blow before the new Super League season with James McDonnell ruled out&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-397052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}