Powell ahead of Tigers restart

This article is taken from Daryl's regular column in our monthly club magazine ROAR. You can read August's edition of ROAR, for free, at castlefordtigers.com/roar.

PLUS over on Tigers TV, watch Daryl's first virtual press conference previewing Castleford's match against Catalans Dragons.

So here we are after all this time of inactivity and no rugby league games. We are back in action and looking forward to starting our challenge of winning the Super League title for the first time. It has been an incredibly frustrating experience for the whole country for loads of reasons. Sport has been hard hit, individual sport will have been tough, but it’s been near on impossible to maintain our ability to function as a whole unit in team sports. The coaching staff and players have worked really hard throughout this difficult period and our first week back into training showed how much the players had focused on keeping themselves in good shape, first of all as individuals and then in small groups as we work towards getting back together as Castleford Tiger’s team.

We now have Catalan Dragons in front of us before taking on Hull twice in the Challenge Cup and in Super League itself, all of them present really tough games against big physical packs, the most difficult thing to get back after coming in having had so long off is the contact of rugby league which of course is significant. We have worked hard over the last two weeks to create some durability in the players in this regard and it will be interesting to see how we handle these two teams who are probably the biggest in the league.

The part of the game that is going to be quite difficult and interesting in equal measure are the new rules, in particular, the ‘six again’ rule which has made the game much quicker in Australia and watching the first games last week it is going to do the same in this country as well. Fewer stoppages obviously mean more emphasis on players ability to sustain intensity throughout longer periods of time. It will be interesting, first of all for this season but then, as we see the impact of the rule on the game itself to see what happens to some of the really big players in rugby league and whether the squads of teams look a little bit different in the future. I would have preferred this rule to have been left until next season so players could’ve had more time to work towards the impact that it will have on the game, we do however have to get on with it and we believe we will be well suited to be able to take advantage of the quick nature of the sport that will be driven by this rule change.

Finally, I would again like to thank the whole club for the patience, hard work and honesty throughout this incredibly challenging time. I hope we can now get back to close to normal as possible.

Thank you and stay safe

Daryl