Major injury blow confirmed as Burgess names Yates' replacement
Prop Luke Yates was forced off during the early stages of Sunday's Super League Round Four defeat to Wakefield Trinity with an ankle injury, and was seen leaving the ground on crutches and wearing a protective boot.
In his post-match press conference, head coach Sam Burgess admitted the early prognosis was not a good one but now Yates has undergone scans, ligament damage has been revealed and he will be absent for an extended period.
Centre Arron Lindop is also ruled out Saturday's Challenge Cup fourth round trip to neighbours Widnes Vikings under concussion protocol having failed an in-game head injury assessment against Wakefield, with Burgess also confirming he is not expecting any of the players who missed the game through injury to return to fitness
That means full-back Matt Dufty, winger Matty Ashton, centre Toby King and second-rower Lachlan Fitzgibbon are again likely to sit out alongside longer-term absentees in scrum-half Leon Hayes and centre Connor Wrench.
"He will be a while. We're looking at six weeks for him," Burgess said of Yates.
"We won't get anyone back this week – we lose Yatesey and Arron Lindop with the concussion.
"It's the nature of it – the next guy comes in."
Burgess took the step of confirming who 'the next guy' is in terms of replacing Yates, with Zane Musgrove set to come into the team to face the Vikings.
The Samoan prop has not featured in any of The Wire's past three matches, but his head coach has now challenged him to nail down a spot in his side.
Having featured in the Round One victory at Huddersfield Giants, Zane Musgrove has not played in Wire's last three matches (Image: Mike Egerton/PA Wire) "Zane is a pretty accomplished player and he's the next man up, so he'll get his job done and the guys around him have got to improve on where they've been over the last couple of weeks," Burgess said.
"Zane's just got to do his job. It's hard to pick 17 blokes when there's 30-odd that are fit and ready to go, and I think the middles have been doing a fairly decent job.
"It's hard to leave out Jimmy Harrison and Paul Vaughan, who have both been going pretty well, then Jordy Crowther and Joe Philbin bring a different style of game for us.
"It's been tough for Zane, but all he's got to do is get his job done.
"We've got six weeks where we'll be without Yatesey, so he's the next man up."
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