Gleeson returns home with Leeds in sights

In one important sense, Martin Gleeson will be going home for Saturday's Powergen Challenge Cup semi-final against Leeds.

It was in the relative obscurity of the Huddersfield Giants that Gleeson, originally from Wigan, cut his teeth as a player, before being recruited by Saints at the start of last season. 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. It was nice and local for my home and they are such a strong club."

Millward raised a few eyebrows by throwing a young centre – he is still only 22 – from a relegated club straight into his first-choice team from the very start of last season, but Gleeson was a resounding success, causing no end of trouble with his nimble footwork.

"It helped a lot being surrounded by world-class players," he says, but the mark of his quality was that he never looked out of place among the Longs and Sculthorpes and was a clear choice for Great Britain, both in their ill-fated single Test in Australia and their much more successful series against New Zealand.

By that time, some of his initial impact had started to wear off at club level, with defenders sometimes finding his intentions easier to read than they had, but Gleeson does not believe that was a case of "second season syndrome" setting in early.

"I've been around for three seasons now, so people are pretty used to 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."