Former Castleford Tigers head coach Craig Lingard has admitted that he wasn’t completely surprised by the club’s decision to part ways with him.
Lingard had spent just one year as head coach of the club, but his contract was cut short this week.
The news came just days after the club confirmed that investor Martin Jepson had become the new chairman, and had taken almost 100% of the club’s shares.
Some have suggested that it’s a move that shows great ambition from Jepson, while others lamented it as part of a cut-throat business, as Lingard was widely considered to have done a good job.
“Not a complete surprise” – Craig Lingard opens up after Castleford Tigers exit
Speaking to Super League Raw this week, Lingard explained that he wasn’t as shocked as many fans were: “I wouldn’t say it was a complete surprise.
“You always trust your instincts. There were little things that were happening over the last couple of weeks that made me sit back and question things.
“The spidey sense tingles sometimes, and it was tingling a little bit with me but maybe I was looking into too much about it. There was always the takeover that was happening in the background, and that’s what made me think, ‘Oh, we’re just waiting for things to happen now, we’ll get the takeover out of the way, and then we can move forward.'”
He continued: “I had a meeting booked in with the Director of Rugby Danny Wilson anyway and then randomly I got a couple of messages from people outside of the game, over the weekend, asking me why I was leaving Cas and what was going on.
“So then I had a fairly short meeting with Danny Wilson who was giving me the news saying that the club were going a different way. Martin had taken over the club, he wanted it to have a different look, he wanted next season to look and feel different to what it had done this season. Ultimately he decided he wanted to put his own coaching staff in place and that’s how it was.”