Castleford Tigers 'in good shape' for crunch Super League clash with Wigan Warriors

Tigers were due for a bye in Betfred Super League round 10, following Toronto Wolfpack’s withdrawal, but stepped in as Wigan Warriors’ opponents after a coronavirus outbreak at Catalans Dragons meant the French club’s entire squad had to go into isolation.

This afternoon’s fixture, behind closed doors at Warrington’s HJ Stadium, was confirmed on Tuesday, giving Tigers limited time to prepare for a meeting with the league leaders.

But after last weekend’s Coral Challenge Cup tie against Hull was postponed, also because of coronavirus, Powell would rather be playing than not.

The Tigers coach insisted: “There’s a couple of ways of looking at it.

“Firstly, we wanted to play this week – we missed a game against Hull and that is going to be moved, so this game [today] probably helps us now and down the track in the season.

“We would have played Wigan in October which is pretty heavy with fixtures anyway so there’s a bit of benefit there – and I think we are in good shape.”

Tigers have lost both their games since Super League resumed following lockdown and Powell reflected: “Every week we’ve lost a player on the day of the game, for the first two games, so I am touching wood that we get a bit of luck this week and we can actually go into the game with the team we’ve selected.

“But the players are good and I thought we were excellent in lots of ways against St Helens.

“We will need to improve a bit in certain areas, but there’s a real drive and commitment from the group at the moment and we are in a good place.”

Tigers produced a superb defensive effort in the 10-0 loss against Saints 13 days ago, but Powell admitted they need to be better with the ball.

Stand-off Jake Trueman, who missed out against Saints because of a back problem, will return, allowing Paul McShane to revert to hooker and Powell expects those changes to pep up Tigers’ attack.

“We have trained well,” he added. “For 25 minutes against Catalans and pretty much the whole game against St Helens I thought our commitment levels were absolutely superb.

“We need to replicate that against Wigan and we want to challenge them a bit more with the ball, consistently.

“Gareth O’Brien has had another couple of weeks with us to look at how we play so he is a bit more embedded in there and we should be more of an attacking threat on both sides of the field.”

Prop Dan Smith is in contention for his first game since lockdown.

“He has had a bit of a calf strain, but he is fit again,” Powell confirmed. Junior Moors and Tyla Hepi are also included in Tigers’ initial squad, after not featuring against Saints.

Former Tigers prop Mitch Clark drops out from the Wigan side which beat Leeds Rhinos two weeks ago.

Thomas Leuluai (ankle injury), Ben Flower (back) and George Burgess (suspension) return to the squad and Chris Hankinson and Amir Bourouh are also in contention.

Wigan Warriors: from Hardaker, Marshall, Hankinson, French, Leuluai, Powell, G Burgess, Isa, Farrell, Flower, Greenwood, Smithies, Bullock, Byrne, Manfredi, Bibby, H Smith, Havard, Hastings, Bourouh, Shorrocks.

Castleford Tigers: from Olpherts, Shenton, Trueman, Richardson, Watts, McShane, Millington, Holmes, McMeeken, Milner, Massey, Sene-Lefao, Griffin, Foster, D Smith, Moors, Clare, O’Neill, Hepi, Turner, O’Brien.

Referee: James Child (Dewsbury).

Kick-off: Today, 4.15pm.

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