Leeds Rhinos hooker Kruise Leeming admits he is dreaming of forcing his way into England’s World Cup squad.
The former Huddersfield Giants star showcased his ability with a devastating brace in last week’s thumping 60-6 rout of Castleford Tigers.
He has represented England at Academy and England Knights level and trained with Shaun Wane’s senior squad at Leeds Beckett University in April.
While the likes of James Roby, Josh Hodgson, Daryl Clark and Paul McShane may currently lie above him in Wane’s pecking order, uncapped Leeming is aiming high in a World Cup year.
The 25-year-old told Rugby League Live: “It will be a bit of a leap for me to make the World Cup squad but it’s not something that I’ve written off this year.
“It’s something I’ll be trying to achieve and if you don’t feel like you can be as good as them then you’re already losing.
“I’m not saying that I feel like I’m better than the other hookers in and around the England squad – not at all.
“But I think you’ve got to feel that you can mix it up with those boys.
“Shaun Wane has picked me for the train-on squad, so I must be doing something right.
“It’s just about keeping my confidence high, training really hard and doing all the little things right.
“Then things that you thought were ages away start to happen for you.”
Leeming, who won the Challenge Cup in his first season at Headingley last year, believes he is reaping the benefits of putting in additional work away from the club’s Kirkstall training headquarters.
“That Cas game was an example of me being rewarded for all the hard work I’ve put in away from training,” he said.
“If I’d not been training so hard then, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have played so well in that game?
“I went training in Leeds recently with England and Shaun said he was happy with my game.
“There is some stuff with my defence that I need to look at and work on, which we’ve spoken about.
“But all in all, he’s happy with how I’m going. I just need to take that next step now and play consistently at a high-level week in and week out.
“If you look at players like James Roby and Paul McShane, they never seem to have a bad game. That’s the level I need to get to.”
Born in Swaziland, a landlocked country in Southern Africa now known as Eswatini, Leeming grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Now he in the mix to represent England at a World Cup with Leeds team-mate Mikolaj Oledzki, a Rhinos academy product who was born in Poland.
Leeming added: “They’re inspiring stories and I think that’s why we love rugby league.
“You’ve got all these guys coming from different walks of life and ultimately all having the same end goal of playing in a Grand Final and a World Cup.
“We’ve all got our own story and that’s nice. I used to go back to Swaziland every year from being four year’s old up until I was about 15, when I started getting in academy teams.
“I signed a first-team deal at Huddersfield and couldn’t get the time off, so I’ve not been back since then.
“To get my village is a 24-hour trip but people in Swaziland know what I’m up to here in England.
“A reporter from the national newspaper there rang me and did a piece which he published, which was nice because my family there obviously read it. It's great to do my homeland proud.”
