RFL CEO explains Castleford Tigers IMG blunder

The IMG Grades have been confirmed with Leeds Rhinos, Wigan Warriors, Warrington Wolves,  Hull KR, Hull FC, St Helens and Catalans Dragons the clubs leading the way with Grade As.

There are 17 clubs with Grade Bs from Super League and the Championship with some Super League clubs finishing beneath Championship clubs.

Toulouse Olympique and Wakefield Trinity for instance rank 10th and 11th above Leigh Leopards in 12th, Castleford Tigers in 13th and London Broncos in 24th.

Castleford’s standing may change however as they prepare to appeal the decision.

This comes after an error which CEO of the RFL Tony Sutton explained.

He said: “After the data submission deadline Castleford submitted further information to us yesterday evening and we think it is relevant that we give that consideration and review, particularly given the tight scoring around the say 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th positions and the margins in there.

“I don’t really want to go into too much detail as I don’t want to preclude any of the findings of that review in terms of information submitted.

“I’ve spoken to the club significantly as you might imagine over the last 24 hours and again today, and we’ve outlined what information that we’d want to see for us to be able to assess and review the question that they’ve raised.

“I’m not going to put a strict timeline on it because I can’t really outline the amount of work that we’ll need to do but I don’t think it’s in anybody’s interest for it to be dragged out, so I’d measure that probably in days rather than weeks, let’s put it that way.”

Mark Grattan said:  “We are extremely disappointed with the RFL’s decision as both ourselves and the RFL made an error but the RFL error masked our error on the scores which meant up to 7pm yesterday evening, we believed our score to be correct.”