McGuire to miss six weeks after surgery

The Super League and world champions, Leeds, will be without one of their leading lights, Danny McGuire, for up to six weeks. McGuire is to have an operation on a groin injury which he first suffered last October and which has got worse in the opening weeks of the new season.

"This was the earliest opportunity when Danny could have had the surgery," said his coach, Tony Smith. "We had hoped we could postpone it, but he aggravated the injury against Hull and felt it again against St Helens."

The Rhinos, already without hooker, Matt Diskin, for the first three months of the season, do not expect the Great Britain stand-off to play until the start of the Challenge Cup in April.

Brian Noble's double role as Bradford and Great Britain coach could be reviewed by the club, which has lost its first two games of the new season.

The Newcastle Knights are the latest Australian club to be accused of serious misconduct on a pre-season trip. The Knights have sacked one, as yet unnamed player and fined 12 a total of A$50,000 (£21,000) after a drunken rampage on a university campus in the country town of Bathurst, where they had been playing Penrith in a friendly.

The players are alleged to have broken into a female dormitory and one of them is alleged to have indecently assaulted a student. The National Rugby League has fined the club $100,000 (£42,000) for the incident.