Hull FC legend and former Castleford Tigers coach, Lee Radford, made a one-off appearance in rugby league last week, as he linked up with a former team to set up a joint training session to form part of a pre-season training camp at current club Northampton Saints.
Radford played over 350 rugby league matches, representing both the Black and Whites and Bradford Bulls in a 17-year career.
Post-playing, he turned to coaching and took over at FC from Peter Gentle in 2014. He would lead his hometown club until 2020, winning the Challenge Cup twice.
In 2022, he would take over at Castleford Tigers, but would depart in March the following year, winning 14 of 32 matches.
His current role saw him depart rugby league and switch codes to rugby union, and is now the defence coach of 2024 Premiership winners, Northampton Saints.
However, last week saw the former rampaging prop forward return to the sport he grew up playing, as he took his side up north to Hull for a pre-season training camp.
There, Radford used contacts of his former employers to arrange a training session between the Saints and Castleford Tigers.
The 46-year-old admitted it was not his choice to come to Hull, and in fact he found it more draining working in his home city than commuting down south.
“It was Dows’s [Saints head coach Phil Dowson] idea,” Radford said, speaking to The Northampton Chronicle. “With a lot of new blokes coming in and a lot of young faces being promoted from the Academy, he wanted to get away and get on a trip where we were in each others’ pockets for a few days. Somehow Hull got tossed up – I don’t know how.”
Radford hails Castleford Tigers link up
Radford praised the link-up with Castleford Tigers, admitting both sides learned from each other.
“We did some things we normally wouldn’t do. We had a joint training session with Castleford Tigers, led by both coaching teams, so we got to show our big boys what it’s like to get back onside 10 metres.
“They applied themselves really well and then on the Thursday coming back down to Northampton, we had a session against Doncaster as well. It was great for us because it was the first time we’ve been able to go 15 against 15 this pre-season due to lack of numbers so it was good and we’ll be better for that.”
Radford owns a restaurant in Hull, and took his players for a team bonding session that improved morale and allowed for new faces to gel with the squad.
He explained: “We went to my restaurant… we had a feed, we had a round of golf and a night around Beverley so it was good!
“Coming from rugby league, our pre-season was notoriously in November, December in the really poor months weather wise so we always would go abroad for that reason.
“But our pre-seasons here are in the summer so we’re not chasing the heat as much.
“We’ve swapped the Costa del Sol for Hull.”
