Lee Smith seals release from Wasps to Leeds in time for Bradford derby

Lee Smith is ready to leap from reserve team rugby union to one of the Super League's most intense rivalries, having secured a release from Wasps in time to return to the Leeds side for Thursday night's derby against Bradford. Smith, who scored the winning try for Leeds in last autumn's Grand Final then headed south after representing England in the Four Nations series, made the last appearance of his brief and unhappy stint in rugby union for the Wasps A team against Bath United at Henley on Monday night last week. The Wasps director of rugby, Tony Hanks, had ruled out the possibility of the 23-year-old utility back being released back to Leeds after that game. But Smith, who made only two first-team appearances for the club, was desperate to return north and, after Wasps reluctantly agreed to his request, Leeds began the tricky business of adding him to their squad without breaching the Super League salary cap. "I would like to thank London Wasps for giving me the opportunity to have a go at playing rugby union," Smith was quoted as saying in a statement released by Wasps. "Unfortunately things have not worked out for me and I am returning home to be closer to my family." His unhappiness was timely for Leeds, who are struggling in the bottom half of the Super League table and have suffered so many injury problems in recent weeks that they have been forced to play the rookie second-row Chris Clarkson at centre with two equally raw youngsters, Tom Bush and Michael Coady, on the wing. Their selection options have already increased before the derby against Bradford with the captain, Kevin Sinfield, expected to return from the thigh injury that has kept him out since last month's World Club Challenge. Kylie Leuluai should also be back to bolster the pack. But the Australian centre Brett Delaney has been struggling all season with a hamstring problem and, although he was included in the 19-man squad named by the Leeds coach, Brian McClennan, today, Smith is now expected to replace Clarkson in the starting side – if the Rhinos can resolve those salary cap complications. Wakefield Trinity are resigned to losing Shane Tronc, the Australian prop who joined them from the North Queensland Cowboys last winter. Homesickness is also Tronc's problem, although in his case it is his wife and children who are understood to be pining for Queensland rather than Leeds. He has been included in Trinity's squad for their derby at Castleford on Friday but is expected to join the Brisbane Broncos, who have made an indifferent start to the National Rugby League season, soon after Easter. Wakefield are being linked with Ashton Sims, a 25-year-old prop who represented Fiji in the 2008 World Cup but has yet to play for Brisbane this year, as a possible replacement. Two meetings in the next month, one of them at the George Hotel in Huddersfield where the Northern Union was born in 1895, could pave the way for amateur and junior rugby league to switch to a summer season, 14 years after the Super League revolution of 1996. Officials from the Rugby Football League have been carrying out a consultation process with amateur and junior clubs for the last two months and are likely to report back to a meeting of the game's Community Board on 30 April that there is now overwhelming support for avoiding the months of December, January and February, especially after the experiences of the last two harsh winters in which many matches were postponed. Many amateur clubs now agree with the RFL that shifting the season to run from March until November with a mid-summer break would the best way of arresting the decline in participation levels in the game's traditional heartlands and matching the successful expansion of the Summer Conference competition which will kick off in May with a record 108 teams in England, Scotland and Wales.