Louis Senior, a winger from Hull KR, was confirmed to have been loaned to Castleford Tigers earlier this week. Craig Lingard has since disclosed that Senior may only be the first of “several more bodies.”
After losing to Salford Red Devils, the team’s injury list reached 15, and Sylvester Namo’s suspension made things worse, leaving the team virtually disbanded.
In fact, Cas will only be able to select a 19-man roster rather than the usual 21-man roster for this week’s Super League match against Wigan Warriors.
This week, they have only signed one player on loan: winger Louis Senior, who will team up with twin Innes to give the Tigers a deadly edge.
Senior, Lingard told BBC Radio Leeds, would ideally be the first of many new signings: We needed to bolster that department because we only had one true winger.
Lingard remarked of Senior, “We’re pleased to have him in for that initial two-week period, hopefully, it’s going to be longer than that,” before outlining the club’s initiatives to bring in more players.
Lingard went on, “As a club, we’ve been having hourly talks with other clubs as well. These conversations have been ongoing.” Things move and change. Sadly, despite our best efforts behind the scenes, we have not been able to bring anyone else in this week.
We anticipate a little bit more activity after this week and possibly early the following week. We may add a few more players, but that will again depend on how our team performs in the games this week and how well its players handle injuries and suspensions.
“At this time, we anticipate receiving a few more bodies the following week, but as I mentioned, that may change depending on what transpires this weekend.”
Could Castleford Tigers make a signing before Friday’s game?
The fact that Castleford Tigers haven’t been successful in securing another loan deal is obviously not due to a lack of effort, but they may need to act quickly now that they are in dire need of players.
Talks are still ongoing, so in theory they could sign someone and add them to the squad for Friday’s match against Wigan, but there would be a cost, according to Lingard.
“We would lose an interchange from the game on Friday if we brought someone in and wanted to add him to the squad after that point,” he disclosed. Therefore, technically, we could still complete it after today at noon, but adding another player to our 21-man roster would result in an interchange.
The coach of the Castleford Tigers was asked if he could see this happening even though the deadline had obviously passed. The response he gave will likely disappoint Cas supporters.
“We’re trying, but I can’t see it happening to us realistically,” Lingard retorted.
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