Overall, regardless of how we are going, I am just happy to be playing Super League again, to be back in the UK and to be out of France.

After I left Wakefield at the end of last season I went over to play for Lyon and it was tough. They have got one of the best soccer teams in Europe and that's all they care about. League isn't really followed. We were playing in front of crowds of about 30 people, so it was pretty awful.

The travelling didn't help. The longest away trip we had was seven- and-a-half hours and the shortest was three or four hours. It was a tough gig and I was glad to get back.

To be honest, that was one of the things that kept me going. I had messages plastered all over my walls in France saying things like "tough it out, finish the season and prepare for Super League".

That was just to keep my motivation up and to keep me from falling into a rut. It can get you down, the team I was in was pretty poor and we were battling over last spot all year. It would have been easy to throw the towel in, but my main motivation was to get back over here, that was always in the back of my mind.

The footy here is harder, but everything is a lot more organised and professional. I like it here in West Yorkshire, I know a few of the boys at Cas and it's a good opportunity for me.

Castleford have given me a chance and I want to repay them by playing well for the rest of the year. Obviously we aren't in a good position, but things can only get better after what happened in Cardiff.

That was really disappointing. The script was good, making my debut against my old club in a stadium like that. It would have been lovely to beat them, but we just weren't in the game at all. It definitely didn't go to plan and from my point of view it was hard to swallow, but that's footy. At least we get a chance to put things right against Bradford this week.

We are halfway through the season now and it's a fresh start. We can put the first half of the year behind us.

It is fair to say we aren't going to be in the semis, but it is up to us to motivate ourselves, get up for games and make sure we play well each week. Even if you don't get near the semis, there's no reason why you can't play good footy each week.

There's a lot of players out of contract at the end of the year, so there's enough to play for regardless of our position in the table.

And who wants to play poorly in Super League? If you do that, you make yourself look silly. It is hard football and nobody wants to go out and make themselves look stupid.

We've got some good players in this team, like Brent Sherwin, Ryan McGoldrick and Awen Guttenbeil and there's some good young kids coming through. Joe Westerman is up and coming and he has got a big future. We have got the clientele and there's great potential here, no doubt about that, we've just got to put it all together.