Castleford Tigers suffer long-term injury blow but recruit set for debut v St Helens

“He has done his MCL [medial collateral ligament],” coach Andy Last confirmed ahead of Friday’s trip to Betfred Super League champions St Helens.

“It looks like he’ll be out for six-eight weeks. We’re hoping he might be able to push himself to come back for the Hull KR game. That’s the time frame he has out in his own mind.”

Last admitted, as bad as the prognosis is, it could have been worse. He said: “Looking at the incident, it was a real nasty one.

“The ankle got in an awful position and his knee took a fair bit of the impact of the collision. The time scale is better than we anticipated, so we’ve got lucky there.”

On-loan Warrington half-back Riley Dean is set to make his Tigers debut at Saints, which will allow Jack Broadbent to move into the centres and Alex Mellor to second-row.

“Riley is a very good footballer,” Last said of the former Featherstone Rovers loan player. “He’s comfortable playing short and long with the ball in hand, he’s got a good running game and his short kicking gamer is something which will add to us.

“We’re looking for him to be that foil for Jacob Miller. Milky can lead the team and Riley is the second pivot.

“They have done well on the training field, they look comfortable and they are building a nice combination.

“With Gaz Widdop finding some reasonable form against Warrington and looking a threat out of full-back, the spine of the team is looking good. The team are comfortable with how we want to play, we have just got to go out and execute.”