Danny Ward offers update on his future at Castleford Tigers

Castleford Tigers complete their season against Leeds Rhinos at Headingley on Friday night having secured their Super League survival at the expense of relegation rivals Wakefield Trinity.

It’s been a poor season by the Tigers standard and one that has seen them move onto their third head coach after the sackings of both Lee Radford and Andy Last, but the future of their current head coach Danny Ward is still up in the air.

The former London Broncos boss took over at the Jungle winning two of his five games thus far securing the club’s future, something he has has spoken to the press about.

He explained: “Yeah it was something I’ve not, emotionally, probably not experienced before. It was very strange, firstly coming off the back of a poor performance, I was raging as a Head Coach as we all do, and then you had all that going on in the background and lads trying to listen to the end of the game.

“It’s such a long time to wait as well, we had to address the end of our match first and put that to bed. I just chucked myself out of the changing rooms and paced up and down the corridors waiting for that result before I entered the media. It was a very mixed bag of emotions.”

Of course Ward was referencing the Tigers huge defeat at the hands of Wigan Warriors by a scoreline of 48-6, however because of Wakefield’s dramatic golden point loss to Leigh it meant that Cas’ Super League status is secured.

Ward continued: “I don’t see it as a huge achievement personally. I’ve been here for six games, I think we were in 11th just on points difference when I arrived and we’re on 11th now.

“I’ve done probably the job that we came here to do and that was to stay in the Super League and that’s it really. It’s a bit of a weird one because we’re not celebrating coming 11th in the league in that sense, it’s certainly not where we want to be and we’ve underperformed and performed poorly a lot of the year so it’s a tough one.

“Yes, we’ve done the job that we came here for, but it’s still very disappointing to be at the end of the league and we’re not celebrating it.”

He has also had his say on his future: “I came in for six six games and that’s not finished yet, but there’s been chats between myself and the club as there always is.

“We’ve been communicating regularly and we’ve had a couple of chats now that is secure, but that’s all it is at the moment. Hopefully we can we can get things resolved in the next week one way or another once the game’s out of the way.

“I’ve made no secret that I’ve enjoyed my time here and want to be here. I put in for the job previously and enjoyed every minute coaching Cas and I’ll be keen to extend that.

“The club have been positive in what they’re saying, so it’s just trying to have some conversations around that and how it works and where they see the club heading and get their vision; and then talking about squads and plans for the future, it’s a lot more into it than just a simple yes or no, signing this, signing that. So yeah, we’re all for that, continuing with those conversations.”