Worry for Castleford as next opponents handed huge boost

It’s worrying news for Castleford Tigers as their next opponents could be set to welcome back three of their biggest stars for the visit of the Tigers.

The Tigers have only won one game so far this season and were beaten 38-0 by Warrington Wolves on Friday night.

Making matters worse as they travel to second place Catalans, the Dragons could welcome back Sam Tomkins, Siua Taukeihao and Romain Navarrete.

Steve McNamara confirmed the news:

“Sam’s in and around it, he’s close to it. We’ll pick and choose when we go with it. Siua is really close as well, we’ve got Romain Navarrete who’s been really influential for us this year.

“Mathieu Laguerre has probably overcome his rib injury now so he’ll be available. Hopefully we’ll get some more options pretty quickly, but if not we’ll concern ourselves with the players that are playing and not the ones who are not.”

He also gave an update on Mitchell Pearce after his first game of the season:

“Obviously it was his first game of the season so there’s a bit of a rust around that. Being a half as well he’s missed the rhythm.

“He had a great pre-season and was looking good then unfortunately we lost him on the eve of the season, so it’s good to have him back.”

The Dragons will be without Tyrone May, Mickael Goudemand and Ben Garcia.

McNamara will also want better defence than he saw against Leeds Rhinos:

“Our tackling was poor. I could tell from the first tackle of the second half, we didn’t make a strong tackle on that and it snowballed from that.

“So our tackling was really really poor, we lost the speed of the ruck. Leeds were a bit more direct and held the ball a lot better than in the first half.

“They had a wealth of possession on the back of good ruck speed, it’s pretty simply. We were on the back foot and when we had it we didn’t challenge them enough with it, so it was double sided on that point.”