Kruise Leeming sets England Knights as benchmark

Kruise Leeming wants to use the England Knights as a stepping stone into the senior side.

The Huddersfield Giants hooker has been included in Paul Anderson’s England Knights squad to tour Papua New Guinea this autumn.

The Knights will play two games against the Kumuls in Lae and Port Moresby, and Leeming wants to impress on the tour to be in with a chance of making it into Wayne Bennett’s senior side.

“The Knights is good because it gives you a shop window,” Leeming told loverugbylegue.com.

“We are playing in front of a lot of people. There’ll be loads of coaches and players watching on and I want to put myself in the shop window for the senior team.

“And that’s the aim for us all. We all want to be selling ourselves by playing to the best of our ability. The Knights gives us that shop window to impress on the big stage.

“It will be a good experience in Papua New Guinea. I’m very honoured to be on the tour because they might never do this again, so I’m lucky to be named one of the 24 players but it will be a great trip and one that I am really looking forward to.”

Leeming, who was actually born in Swaziland, is excited about travelling to Papua New Guinea – the only country in the world where rugby league is the national sport.

“I’ve seen videos everywhere of the people in Papua New Guinea going crazy over rugby players!” the 23-year-old added.

“Obviously you see the good and bad stuff on TV and social media, but we will get to experience it with our own eyes and it is going to be a life-changing experience. We will take it all in and what we are doing is a life memory, so I can’t wait.

“Being in the Knights squad is class and I think with all of us players being around the same age, we have a lot of common interests and we are all at similar stages in our lives like getting houses, girlfriends and so on.

“We’ve always got a lot to talk about and the atmosphere around the place is great.”