Senior fit and Captain Peacock...
fortunate

Coach Brian Noble says he has a fully-fit squad of 24 players to select from for Saturday's clash against New Zealand, with Leeds centre Keith Senior shaking off the ankle injury which prevented him from playing in the Super League Grand Final nine days ago and captain Jamie Peacock recovering from a worrying groin injury.

The Bradford second-rower was forced to delay his departure for the squad?s trip to Marbella after almost losing a testicle as a result of an injury he sustained in the Grand Final.

Peacock, who played on after taking a knee in the groin early in the match, complained of feeling unwell at the start of last week but insists he would have led the team against New Zealand even if he had to have a testicle removed.

?The worse-case scenario was that it would have to be removed but fortunately that was not the case and everything is fine now,? he told the press conference.

?Even if that had to happen, it would only have been a couple of weeks? recovery time, so I would still have played.?

Noble, who plans to name a 19-man squad on Friday, admits he is close to finalising his team but he ruled out calling up a 25th player from the England team which beat France 22-12 at Headingley on Sunday night.

?It gives another group of people the opportunity to keep their engines up to speed,? he said. ?It was a tough hit-out and it puts an element of pressure on this team, knowing there is a team underneath we can select from.

?I thought there were seven or eight people who wouldn?t have looked out of place in this squad. We?ll probably not call anybody up this week. We?ll discuss it with staff and put a few people on stand-by.

?Everybody has trained fully today. We?ve a full deck of 24 to select from. We?ve a very determined group of people and I wouldn?t like to rule anybody out at this stage. We?re going to run a couple of practices before we finalise some areas.

?I?m really pleased with the way things are going. But we?ve got to hit the ground running because we know we are playing a quality outfit.?

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Thanks to www.superleague.co.uk for this story.