Friday Interview: Carl Ablett

Leeds Rhinos hosted three of the city’s schools at their training ground earlier this week to help prepare them for the Carnegie Champion Schools Final in London.

The Super League club will hope to be in the capital on the same weekend themselves next month for the Carnegie Challenge Cup, their last-eight meeting at Hull FC on Sunday the imminent obstacle in that quest.

The obstacles in the way of the children back at Kirkstall are principally their heroes armed with tackle bags.

The wide-eyed youngsters were asked to pick up a ball and bust through a pair of the towering giants to practice the art of breaking a tackle.

It is an obvious mis-match as a skinny 11 year-old goes up against the brute force of a muscular Super League star

For Carl Ablett, one of the Rhinos’ more aggressive players, was it hard easing off to allow them a safe passage?

“Nah, they like it like that,” he tells the Yorkshire Post having just roughed up another of the eager youngsters.

“They’ll go home and tell their mams and dads that they’ve got bashed up by Jamie Peacock.

“You can hear them all saying when they’re lining up – “I’m gonna run it hard, I’m gonna get him here, I’ll try and knock him over.’

“It’s a bit of a test for us but I think they enjoy it all,” he said.

“I think (Rhinos team-mate Paul McShane) Macca’s little brother’s in here as well... but he’s not been yet!”

Hailing from Leeds himself, Ablett has a special affinity with the pupils from Temple Moor High, Priesthorpe High and the South Leeds Academy, one of which will actually play in the curtain-raiser at Wembley on August 27.

He featured there too, in 1996, with Leeds Schools but it is last year’s memory of losing – in surprisingly emphatic fashion – to Warrington which is the one everyone wants to banish.

Beating Hull in the quarter-final would leave them within 80 minutes of an instant return to Wembley but Ablett said: “This is the Challenge Cup.

“It doesn’t matter what happened in the past or what’s going to happen in the future.

“You just need to raise for these games but I don’t think motivation or attitude is a problem.

“The big thing for us is we’ve had the experience of being there at Wembley and if we were to get there again we’d probably have learned some lessons.

“Hopefully we’ve learned some lessons too in life which we can put to good use.”

Erratic Leeds are deemed to have an edge given they ended a three-match losing run with a 20-0 success over Hull just last week.

That drab contest saw them rise to seventh – their rivals slipped to eighth – but it is unlikely their opponents will play as poorly again.

“Defensively, I didn’t think they were too bad,” said Ablett.

“They scrambled and saved a few of our tries while I think offensively we weren’t cracking.

“We spilled a lot of ball, they did too, so they’ll definitely be improving.

“Hopefully, we will as well, we’ll get a better game and the rain stays away this time so we can show a bit of footy.

“Hull like to promote the ball and they have some dangerous players.

“They’ll be smarting coming off that defeat and getting nilled; I can imagine what they’re going through this week.”

The 25-year-old, who played in all three of Leeds’s successive Grand Final wins, is having to re-adjust on a personal level after switching from second-row to centre given Keith Senior’s season-ending knee injury.

“It’s tough,” he admitted. “When I’ve played centre before it’s just been filling in for the odd game here and there.

“So, to have these last four or five matches, for 80 minutes, has been like learning a new position.

“It’s probably one of the hardest to defend in and I’m continually learning on the job.

“(Ryan) Hally’s a good man to play inside because he’s had Keith there for a few years.

“I spoke to Keith a bit about it too and he’s helped me out on a little stuff.”

Ablett, whose natural footballing talent allows him to make the shift, continued: “You’re right on the edge when it comes to defence.

“You’re not in the middle where the big guys are battering in.

“Out there they are throwing all the shapes at you with two guys running, you’re making decisions, coming in then chasing out.

“It’s not got the volume you have in the middle but it’s the decision- making.”

Although he comes across as an amiable sort off the pitch, Ablett is renown for being one of the nastier individuals when it comes to on-field banter and niggling with opposing enforcers. He would be the first to try to rile Hull’s volatile Epalahame Lauaki, for instance, and was reared at the notorious Middleton ARLFC club so it comes as no surprise that he is missing the added physicality he gets closer to the action.

“I don’t think you can go out there and be Mr Nice,” he said.

“A few lads probably say I’m a bit quiet off the field but on it that’s where the war is.

“You go on there and you have got to get that attitude right. It’s probably just a frame of mind I need to get in to perform at where I need to be. Sometimes I probably have gone a bit too far but discipline is something I’m getting better at.”

The need is for Leeds to get better as a squad now with the Challenge Cup their most realistic chance of silverware given their current league position.

“It’s important to back that (Hull win) up now,” added Ablett.

“That period we’ve been through was a tough one and it probably tested our character.

“Hopefully we’ve come through a little bit of that but we know one performance doesn’t cure what’s gone on for the last three or four weeks before.

“The run-in starts now. People talk about peaking and if we start to put some form together we’ve got some experience and quality that hopefully will show in these next few games.”

Agar confident of Hull success

Hull FC coach Richard Agar is adamant his side can break down Leeds’s iron defence in Sunday’s Carnegie Challenge Cup quarter-final.

A week ago, the East Yorkshire side were held pointless in a Super League game between the sides at Headingley Carnegie.

But Agar said: “If you look at our stats through the season – the amount of tries we score, line breaks we make and tackles we’ve bust – generally it’s not been a problem.

“We know we’re going to be better this week. Offensively our form has been okay for a long time.

“While we were disappointed with last week, we’re not going to dwell too much on it and this now is very much do-or-die.”