'It was detrimental': Castleford Tigers boss Lee Radford has selection rethink after pre-season setback
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Tigers were due to visit Cougar Park in a testimonial game for Keighley’s ex-Castleford star Jake Webster, but the game fell victim to a frozen pitch.
Radford confirmed it will not be rearranged, which means he’ll be putting more emphasis on this Sunday’s hit out at another Betfred Championship side, Whitehaven.
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Hide Ad“We trained in the conditions the day before and I had a feeling the game probably wouldn’t go ahead,” Radford said of last weekend.
“But it has been detrimental to a few of the squad players, who would have had another opportunity to impress, so that probably affects this week’s selection slightly.
“It was disappointing for some of those blokes who would have had a real chance of putting their best foot forward.”
Tigers won’t be looking to add in an extra pre-season match to replace the Cougars fixture, but Radford stated: “We have a reserves fixture the week before the season starts, against Wakefield, so we might play one or two blokes in that who weren’t going to participate.”
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Hide AdRadford will name a squad for the trip to Cumbira on Friday. He said: “We anticipated going there with a pretty big squad last week.
“Now with us only having two official pre-season friendlies we’ll probably go to Whitehaven with a stronger squad than anticipated.”
Last week’s setback denied Radford a chance to measure how his team are shaping up ahead of their Betfred Super League round one game at Hull in three weeks’ time, on Sunday, February 19.
“It was going to be an opportunity to have a look at some of the stuff we need to fix up and get right for the start of the year,” he said.
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Hide Ad“We are making those decisions off training at the moment, so I’m looking forward to Sunday.
“It’s a fair old trip up there, I’ve read about the financial position they’ve been in over the last 12 months and hopefully we can go to Whitehaven, get a crowd and contribute to the game up there.”