They’ve been doing it tough with injuries lately, but Castleford are likely to have as many as SEVEN first-teamers back in their ranks for the Challenge Cup semi-final clash against Warrington this weekend, Daryl Powell has confirmed.
“There will be those who I rested, who were carrying bits and pieces last week, that will come back in,” Powell said.
“It made sense to give them an opportunity to be right at the top of their games this week. So we’ve got Michael Shenton, Oliver Holmes, Nathan Massey, Niall Evalds, Jake Trueman, Adam Milner and Gaz O’Brien.
“We need them after last week – this is a new competition.”
One player who will not be appearing on Saturday is George Griffin who was given a one-match ban by the RFL for a late tackle on Luke Gale in the defeat to Leeds.
“He’s disappointed, we appealed it last night, but it stayed as it is even though I thought we had a pretty strong case and that was reflected in the RFL’s comments.
“It was late, but the RFL referenced that it was a tackle in the meeting twice, but we will have a really good squad of players out there on Saturday.”
Powell is happy to finally have a headache in terms of team selection.
“Truey (Jake Trueman) had a bit of a back problem, Adz (Adam Milner) will be a bit of a doubt, but I think he will be alright.
“There’ll be a couple of decisions that I need to get right – we’ve got more availability so it’s a little a bit harder.
“Basically, if you’ve been fit you’ve been in the team the past few weeks.”
Castleford’s horrendous defeat to Leeds last weekend hasn’t been talked about, according to Powell.
“We’ve got a semi-final on the horizon, which can have an impact on performances, but there’s no excuses this week.
“It’s the biggest game we’ve faced for a while and our attitude and commitment to defend needs to be right where we know it can be – it hasn’t been that way for a couple of weeks but its a great opportunity to put things right.
“We know what we can do as a team and we need to know where we need to be this week, we’ve had a couple of real good sessions and meetings which has set the scene this week and then its all about how we deliver on the field.
“I made a decision before the Leeds game that I would move straight onto the Warrington game; you don’t want to sweep things under the carpet, but you just look at the teamsheet please!
“We’ve been adjusting our team consistently in games, but I’m confident with everything that I’ve seen from the players, the spirit has been great from Monday.
“I asked the players to be focused regardless if they are in the team or not.
“We haven’t reviewed the game – I said that straight afterwards, there would be no point either way, let’s just move onto Warrington and thats we’ve done.
“I’ve asked the players who weren’t playing last week to build a plan about what we’ve done against them the two times we’ve played them and they’ve delivered that pretty eloquently at the start of the week.”
