HUDDERSFIELD GIANTS will be without Tom Burgess for Saturday’s trip to Hull KR after coach Luke Robinson revealed the number of injury issues the England prop has been playing with this season.
Burgess has made ten appearances since joining Huddersfield from South Sydney Rabbitohs ahead of this year and finally tasted a first league success in claret and gold when the Giants beat Hull FC at Magic Weekend.
But since that game he has received several injections with Robinson explaining how he has been playing through the pain so far this year for the injury-plagued Giants.
“He will probably miss out this week, he’s been carrying loads of niggles and knocks,” said Robinson.
“In this bit of time off he has had injections in his elbow and his knee, and possibly his hip as well.
“With the injury situation we might have given him weeks off earlier in the season, but he gallantly puts his hand up.
“But carrying those niggles and knocks, it’s been difficult for him to train. It’s been a case of bandaging him up and rolling him out at the weekend.
“This was a good opportunity to alleviate some of those stresses. He’s got issues with shoulder, his elbow, his wrist, and his knees have probably caused him the most gripe of late.
“To give him a bit of time to rest and recover those, so we can see the best of Tom Burgess, will be good for him and good for us as well.”
Robinson also explained how other players in his squad have been in a similar situation during their injury crisis, saying: “It always has a knock-on effect.
“When players get injured, and it’ll happen in every other club and every other sport, all it does generally is heighten the workload of everybody else around them.
“It isn’t just the injured players – in training certain players need to do more because you don’t have as many bodies on the field, and certain players have to do more within the games because you don’t have the right personnel.
“It’s no different to any other side but we had so many people out that it’s put a lot of stress on not only Burge but other players in the team to keep turning up and putting long minutes in on the training field and the field.
“That’s dampened our performance levels a bit, but fingers crossed we’re coming out the end of that now.”
Robinson hopes to have both Harry Rushton and George King available in the pack against Hull KR, with the latter potentially making a long-awaited debut against his former side.
