Castleford Tigers coach delivers Jason Qareqare injury update following Leigh Leopards defeat

Castleford Tigers are hopeful that winger Jason Qareqare will return for their trip to Hull KR next week having missed Thursday night’s defeat against Leigh Leopards with a hamstring problem.

Qareqare’s absence from the team sheet at The Jungle came as no surprise, with Tigers boss Craig Lingard revealing the Fiji international had tweaked his hamstring during his pre-match press conference the day prior.

Youngster Fletcher Rooney made his home debut and deputised for Qareqare on the wing, scoring the opening try four minutes in  but ultimately seeing Cas fall to a 20-10 defeat.

Earlier this season, Qareqare missed circa three months of the campaign with an ankle injury which required surgery.

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Castleford Tigers coach delivers Jason Qareqare injury update following Leigh Leopards defeat

But this time around, his hamstring issue isn’t set to cause any long-term problems, with Lingard admitting post-match that not playing him against Leigh was more a precautionary measure than anything else.

The Fords are next in action against KR next Friday night (August 9), and it would appear that Qareqare could return to action at Craven Park.

Lingard detailed: “I’m not sure if we’re going to send him for a scan. He just had a bit of a twinge from his hamstring.

“We trained Tuesday and he got through that alright, but then he came in for our captain’s run on Wednesday morning and he felt a little bit tight.

“His testing was off as well, he only got to about 75/80% of high speed running, so we just took that decision out of his hands.

“If it had been a massively important game in terms of a cup semi-final or something like that, we might have left it until today and given him a fitness test, but we took it out of his hands.

“We’re hoping it’s not too serious, but we’ll assess it after the weekend again.”

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