{"id":432247,"date":"2026-02-18T12:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432247\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T12:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:21:12","slug":"st-helens-and-leigh-leopards-team-news-with-six-doubts-and-four-out-as-star-set-for-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432247\/","title":{"rendered":"St Helens and Leigh Leopards team news with six doubts and four out as star set for surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

An injury-hit St Helens will host Leigh Leopards on Friday night with Paul Rowley\u2019s side looking to avoid a second defeat in Super League.<\/p>\n

Whilst the Paul Rowley reign got off to a flying start in the Challenge Cup, where Saints won 98-2 on the road against Workington, their Super League start was far less impressive.<\/p>\n

Warrington Wolves won 24-14 on Friday night<\/a> after racing into an 18-0 lead as Saints struggled to deal with the speedy ruck and in particular the efforts of Danny Walker and Cai Taylor-Wray.<\/p>\n

Playing at the same time just under 10 miles away were Leigh Leopards with Adrian Lam\u2019s side getting off to a winning start, defeating Leeds Rhinos 26-14<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leigh will now make the trip to St Helens this week and we\u2019ve looked at the early team news, including which players will definitely miss out and who else could be in doubt for Friday night\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Mikey Lewis\u2019 moment of madness, shock Super League results and World Club Challenge Preview \u2013 Click here to watch the latest episode of The Serious About Rugby League Show<\/a><\/p>\n

Leigh Leopards injury news<\/p>\n

They might have been missing players on Friday night through injury but it looks like Leigh didn\u2019t sustain any more, something that Adrian Lam will be very grateful for.<\/p>\n

That said, he will certainly be without full-back David Armstrong who continues his rehab from an ACL injury but there is hope that centre Umyla Hanley will be back.<\/p>\n

The Dream Team centre suffered an AC joint injury in the pre-season clash with Warrington and it\u2019s confirmed that he\u2019s now on a \u2018week-to-week basis\u2019<\/a> with his involvement on Friday uncertain.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also uncertainty around Aaron Pene (hamstring) and Isaac Liu who both missed round one with what Lam described as \u2018niggles\u2019. Such issues could also rule out Jack Hughes and Frankie Halton.<\/p>\n

St Helens injury news<\/p>\n

For St Helens, they lost a big name player to a serious injury for the second week in a row. Captain Matty Lees suffered a knee injury in the Challenge Cup game, something that will rule him out for 10-12 weeks<\/a> but it\u2019s now been confirmed that Jack Welsby<\/a> will miss three to four months.<\/p>\n

The full-back dislocated his shoulder in the act of scoring and was sent to hospital post-match with Paul Rowley revealing to media on Tuesday that the full-back will have an operation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mark Percival is another who will miss out but Curtis Sironen is back available whilst Noah Stephens\u2018 status is unclear.<\/p>\n

Welsby\u2019s absence could see half-back Tristan Sailor revert to full-back<\/a>, opening the door for one of Jonny Lomax or George Whitby in the halves.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An injury-hit St Helens will host Leigh Leopards on Friday night with Paul Rowley\u2019s side looking to avoid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-432247","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\/432247","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=432247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}