BRIAN Noble yesterday named Paul Sculthorpe as the man to captain Great Britain in the upcoming Tri Nations series at the end of the summer.

Scully is a massive leader for St Helens and I think he will do a good job. He leads by example and for anybody who wants to play he is an inspiration.

I know Scully will handle the captaincy comfortably. He's a great leader. He just turns up at the right time and will always pull something out of the bag when they need it. He's been instrumental in some of their big comebacks this season - he'll always be there with the pass or will make that offload - and that's why he's such a good leader.

You need leaders in your team. You need people who will give you that little bit extra and most teams have got a couple. Saints have got a few.

They were getting beat with only a few minutes to go on Friday and then Sean Long launches that field goal and they win it.

They never give in and they have shown that already this season to comeback against the odds.

Obviously the Great Britain squad is a 40-man squad but there's only 17 of them that's going to play in the test so all of those 40 will have to work hard all year to make sure they have got the form at the end of the season.

They will trim the squad down to about 22 or 24 before they start their final preparations.

It just gives them the chance to get together and know each other because you never know what will happen and if a lot of the key Great Britain players suddenly picked up injuries they need to have players waiting in the wings to slot in.

The positives for the clubs are that it keeps people playing at their best to keep in contention for the final squad.

Leeds have got ten in the squad, including Kevin Sinfield, who got neglected last year and has got a point to prove. He's been very consistent this year and even though he's only young, he's developing some great leadership skills.

It's also a fair call for Matt Diskin, who hasn't played this year since getting the ligament injury last year. Selecting him for the squad shows great faith in him and it will be a good boost for him knowing that he is still being thought about when these big decisions are made.

It's always frustrating for players when they get injured. It can seem a long long way off when you're in rehabilitation and you can't train with the rest of your team-mates because they are doing different things so this will come as a great boost to Disko.

All the lads deserve to be in there, and it's good to see the likes of Bailey, Burrow and Calderwood, who have all come through the Leeds academy.

The fact that there are 19 players from the top two sides in the 40-man squad, ten from Leeds Rhinos and nine from Saints, it shows the level of the competition. The bigger clubs obviously have all the best players and that's practically half the squad contained in those two teams.

A lot of those players have worked their way up through the England 'A' team and they are now ready to take the next step up.

Updated: 08:39 Wednesday, May 04, 2005