THREE Furness Raiders graduates are set to test their mettle against some of the most promising young players in the world tomorrow when England Colleges face the Australian Schoolboys in Newcastle.

Jake Carter, who recently signed his first professional contract with Barrow Raiders, his former Barrow Island team-mate Jake Stockdale and Millom’s Tyler Lancaster have all been named in the team for the Test match at Kingston Park.

Stand-off Carter has the honour of being named England captain for the match too, reprising the role he played in a warm-up game with Catalans Dragons under-19s, and national team head coach Jonny Tuson is impressed with how the trio have acquitted themselves so far.

“They’ve been great,” said Tuson. “Jake was the captain against the Catalans and he’ll be captain again. Jake Stockdale has been brilliant as well and is in the squad.

“Tyler is in the squad, but he just needs to get through the captain’s run for us to declare him fit, but I think everything is looking good for him. All three will play and I’m sure all three will go really well.

“They’ve been excellent all year while they’ve been with me in the North camp and excellent while they’ve been with the England camp as well. I’m sure they will do very well.”

Selection for the team, which brings together the best players from the College Rugby League competition, to take on the Australians is the culmination of a long process which began with Carter, Stockdale and Lancaster attending the first regional training camp in September 2017.

From there, the 29-man England train-on squad was chosen following the North versus South origin match in the middle of the year, eventually being whittled down to a 19-man squad for tomorrow’s encounter.

The touring side’s reputation proceeds them, but Tuson is confident his side can give them a good work-out after seeing how they performed when training against the England Academy side, comprised of full-time youngsters.

“It’s going to be tough,” said Tuson. “In the last few years, we’ve had good camps but haven’t had the competition. But this year, we couldn’t have picked harder opposition.

“They’re the best team in the world and a really strong side. We were lucky enough to train against England Academy last week and that was really tough; they were tough to defend and attack against, but we caused them some problems as well.

“This is just another step up for us as well. We’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, there’s no expectation on us, we’ve worked for a year trying to develop these players and we’ve finally got an opportunity to have a run-out against a really good side.”