Lee Radford provides Castleford injury update as three confirmed to miss the start of the season

Lee Radford gave his first pre-match conference as a Castleford Tigers boss this afternoon and was in jovial spirits as his new side take on the York City Knights this weekend.

For a few of his men, though, the fixture comes too soon in their return from injury.

Radford confirmed that the likes of Sosaia Feki and Jacques O’Neill will miss the start of the 2022 Super League season, however, the rest of his chargers will be fit.

“Sosaia Feki is the same scenario as we last talked, he will be back in March and so will Callum McLelland and Jacques O’Neill who has started running in the past couple of weeks which is good for him,” Radford said.

“Macca (Paul McShane) won’t feature in the friendlies but will be available round one.

“Hopefully with the amount of footy he will play and with the World Cup as well we need to keep him on the field as long as we can.

“Wattsy (Liam Watts) has a little bit of hamstring strain and hopefully he will be pushing for a World Cup spot too.

“Jordan Turner won’t feature this week but might next week depending on a few factors.

“Having said that, I’ve seen enough of Jordan to know it won’t affect my  selection round one.”

Radford, whose last managerial role with Hull FC ended in March 2020, has been taken aback by the sport under the Covid cloud.

“It’s my first experience of Covid, everyone has told me how bad it has been previously.

“We only missed two days before Christmas but the timing of it was very good, it could have been 48 hours later if I was being picky.

“If you are ever going to get an outbreak it will have been that period – we had a large contingent that actually got it.”