McGuire keeping focused despite World Club Cowboys date

Correspondent

Leeds skipper Danny McGuire is refusing to get carried away with thoughts of playing North Queensland Cowboys in the World Club Challenge on February 21 at Headingley.

The 2015 treble winners are set to take on the NRL champions in the closing game of the World Club Series, but McGuire insists that other challenges lay ahead first.

“It’s something that’s hard not to think about really,” he said.

“It’s four or five weeks away, but we’ve got to realise that we’ve got a few important games before in Super League, and not wanting to take our eye off that.

“So it’s something that as players we’ve got to manage.

“I think we’re doing that alright at the minute.

“We’ve spoken about the Cowboys and what a great team they are, but we’ve got Warrington and Widnes before that, and that’s taking quite a lot of our focus as well.

“We need to make sure that we’re ready for those games, but also that we’re ready for that big one in four or five weeks time.”

McGuire also maintains that the Rhinos are fully focused on improving again, despite their wonderful sucess in 2015.

“Last year was an unbelievable year,” he said.

“To do what we did was such a great achievement, but it was only in the last second against Huddersfield that we managed to get the League Leaders Shield.

“We only won the Grand Final by two points – it’s those fine margins.

“It could have gone the other way and we could have only won one trophy.

“We realise the competition is going to be tougher again this year, we’re going to need to improve.

“We can’t stay where we are, we’ve talked about that all pre-season, about how we can’t be happy with what we did last year, we need to improve again.

“It’s something that we’re all working hard to try and do.”