Huddersfield Giants club captain Leroy Cudjoe is hoping to make his return to Super League action in the near future.

The 29-year-old England international centre has been out since the end of last season with a knee injury.

The hometown product pulled out of the Super 8s series last season to have surgery on the injury and has been steadily going through his rehabilitation over the close season.

“Rehab has been going well, and I have made real progress,” said Cudjoe.

“As it has been going really well hopefully it will not be too long now before I can get back to playing.”

He will return to a Giants side who have suffered three defeats in their opening four Super League games – the latest a 22-4 setback at West Yorkshire rivals Wakefield Trinity.

They will look to get back on track at Widnes Vikings on Friday (8pm), and they will be checking on centre Jordan Turner who suffered concussion in the defeat at Wakefield.

Turner was forced off with a head injury in the second half, but head coach Rick Stone felt the player should be ready for the trip to the Select Security Stadium.

“I think he did pass his on-field head test, but the doctor decided not to keep him out there,” explained Stone.

“Jordan Turner had a knock but, considering the situation, we decided not to make him continue.

“It’s disappointing to lose a player like that in a key position, but Tommy Symonds did a reasonable job considering it was his first game back.

“Every team needs a little bit of flexibility in that regard as we didn’t have an outside back on the bench.”

Stone is expecting a tough battle at Widnes and added: “It’s a tough challenge for us every week at the minute.

“We haven’t been able to put everything together and at the start of the season it’s important to put together some consistency to play the style of footy we want to play and the pressure is about winning.

“We will have a talk about that and try and concentrate a little harder this week.

“Every game is important and we have a short turn around and are against a good team.

“It’ll be a tough gig and although they haven’t won all their games they’ve been competitive.

“For us, we need to make sure we balance everything together – the effort included.

“The concentration, game awareness and intelligence has got to be better than the last few weeks.”

And the Giants head coach, who had hooker Kruise Leeming sin-binned in the second half after his side had been put on a team warning, could not hide his frustration with the defeat at Wakefield.

“It was pretty frustrating with the amount of penalties we conceded but to be honest, the better team won,” said Stone.

“We were ill-disciplined and untidy to say the least to give those penalties away, but Wakey defended pretty well and that start to the second half took juice out of us and also a bit of confidence.

“I can’t be too disappointed with the boys effort, but if you’re going to win games at this level you need to have more of a complete package that what we’ve been doing.”

A few places are still available for Giants fans wanting to support Leroy Cudjoe at his Testimonial dinner on March 24.

The event will be compered by former Giants star Robbie Hunter-Paul, and there will be question and answer session with the Giants’ England World Cup star Jermaine McGillvary and former Huddersfield fans favourite Jamahl ‘Jammer the hammer’ Lolesi.

Tickets are £40 per person, or £350 for a table of 10 – the ticket includes a three-course meal.

For information on tickets and tables contact Jenna McGinty on 07889-057026.