Now that Wigan Warriors are Super League Champions, the attention of the likes of Leeds Rhinos, Warrington Wolves, Hull KR and St Helens turns to dethroning them.
Many clubs have gotten busy in terms of recruitment and none more so than the Castleford Tigers.
The West Yorkshire club have made a number of signings but are yet to confirm a new head coach.
That being said, the club have agreed terms with their new head coach believed to be Craig Lingard.
Head of Recruitment Danny Wilson shed more light on the situation on Tigers Talk:
“Obviously the club have been looking to replace the head coach at the end of the season. I’ve said this before, when we are communicating with the fans, people come to conclusions of certain things and pass it off as fact.
“We’ve been quite composed in our recruitment of a head coach. We’ve identified the people that we want to do it and been in conversations with them for a while, the clubs and been putting things in place for a while, it’s just trying to get things over the line.
“At the minute, the club are in a position now where they’ve got the people that they want in post but it’s just a case of the legal side of things and getting things signed up before it can become formally public knowledge. That’s the only thing that’s kind of slowing the announcement up, but there’s work ongoing behind the scenes.”
He also spoke about the new players coming in:
“In terms of recruitment, I spoke about this briefly before, it’s quite a big process, it’s not just one person’s decision, there’s a few people that are involved in there.
“We’ve had several head coaches last year, it was all part of discussions and the assistant coaches and things like that have been involved in discussions throughout the year.
“What we’ve absolutely done is build an identity of the type of player that we want at Castleford moving forward and ultimately making sure those players want to play for Castleford.
“Once you’ve got that identity and that DNA, recruitment becomes a little bit cleaner and I think all those players that are coming in fit the DNA of the player that we want and that is athletic, young, hungry, best years in front of them, want to achieve, want to come to Castleford, want to help Castleford achieve and improve in their career as well.
“So all those qualities we saw in them players and with our talent scouts and stuff as well with them sending the clips and films and videos and having meetings with the players.
“They’re quality people, we need to have people that represent Castleford people and they are honest and hard-working players, so that’s the type of people I want in the club. That’s what these people reflect.”
