Wakefield Trinity's Mason Lino talks disappointing' own form, says win at Leeds Rhinos could be game-changer

Lino played in Trinity’s 38-20 victory at Headingley last Boxing Day, but has yet to win there in a competitive game.

Rhinos’ success at champions St Helens last week will make them hot favourites for Friday’s Betfred Super League derby, against a team yet to get off the mark and Lino accepts Trinity are up against it.

“Leeds are a different team now [to Boxing Day] and they are on the back of a very good win,” he warned.

“They will be playing with a lot of confidence and I think they’ve got a few players back, so that will be a tough challenge for us.”

But the number seven insisted: “We are all looking forward to it, I haven’t won at Headingley in an in-season game so it is a goal for us as a team to go over there and get the job done.”

Rhinos halves, Blake Austin and Aidan Sezer, were at the heart of last week’s 25-24 success at Saints, with the former landing the winning drop goal while his partner was official man of the match.

“They’ve been playing together since they were in the NRL,” Lino noted. “We as a team have got to try and nullify their threats and see how we go.”

Despite conceding 60 points at Wigan Warriors two weeks ago, Trinity are confident in their defence following an improved effort in last Friday’s 8-0 home loss to Huddersfield Giants.

But Lino accepts being nilled in successive matches is not good enough and, as a half-back, he takes responsibility.

“I am disappointed,” he said. “Especially with the nils and not being able to put points on the board; a lot of that is down to the spine and especially me, being the half-back.

“We’ll look to be better this week. As spine players we control the attack; the 60 stung us at Wigan, but I think defensively we were all right last week - we just couldn’t get any points.

“We can take some positives from the first three games, but it’s disappointing we couldn’t get any wins out of them.

“As a team we are still trying to find our feet a bit, but that’s something we are working on and hopefully we can get it applied a bit better [tonight].”

Lino - who confirmed he is keen to stay in Super League and preferably at Wakefield when his contract ends this autumn - is “100 per cent” confident a first win isn’t far off.

He added: “Looking back at the clips, I know the scoreboard probably doesn’t show it, but tiny things can change a lot of the outcomes.

“We can’t be sitting here next week and say we are not far off again, we have got to get it clicking now.

“If we get a win we can get a roll on, we’ve just got to get over that first hurdle. We worked really hard in pre-season and it has not shown in results and performances.

“We’ve got to prove to everyone - and to ourselves - that what we did in pre-season works. We’ll be looking to do that on Friday.”