Castleford Tigers coach’s ‘realistic’ statement over mixed Super League season before bold 2025 promise

Castleford Tigers boss, Craig Lingard, believes his side need to be ‘realistic’ when looking back on the season just gone, but believes it’s been a positive one on the whole. 

The Fords currently sit in 10th place heading into their final game of the season, and find themselves on 15 points. This is a far cry from where they were this time last year though, where they finished 11th on 12 points.

Lingard’s side have also managed to score more points in games this season, registering 415 in 2024 (at the time of writing) compared to last season’s total of 323, and they have also conceded fewer points in defence as well.

“We’ve got to have a bit of realism”

Whilst they cannot climb any higher than their current standing, Lingard still feels like this has been a ‘relatively successful’ season at the Jungle.

“The cold, hard facts are we spent considerably less than last year but we’ve got more points and finished higher than last year,” he told the media ahead of their final league game with Huddersfield Giants.

“There’s 19 players that made their debut, Sam Wood got international recognition and we’ve got young players coming through and developing; so on the whole it’s been a relatively successful season.”

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He also contextualised this, claiming he has a ‘bit of realism’ about his reflections.

“As a competitor, you want to win at everything that you do; and I’m exactly the same. I think we’ve got to have a bit of realism about what’s achievable for us from where we were at the start of the season,” he said.

“Judging us on the same terms as a Wigan, Hull KR, Warrington, those sorts of teams with the budgets they’ve got and the players they’ve got at their disposal; it’s not realistic to judge us by the same metrics as them, we need to judge ourselves on where we were last year and where we started this season.”

“Considerably further ahead”

It’s not been all plain sailing for the Fords this year, though. They have been on the wrong end of some humiliating scorelines, including a 50-8 drubbing against Huddersfield, a 60-6 battering at the hands of Wigan Warriors and a 60-4 thrashing by St Helens; but Lingard said he will still take the lessons from these games into next year.

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“We’ve also had those days against Wigan, St Helens and Huddersfield where we had a lot of points put on us and have been embarrasing at times. There’s always been lessons to be learned from each game, and the back end of the year we’ve been considerably more competivitve than the first part of the season and that’s something we can take into next season.

He also believes they will help his side be better in the long terms.

“The starting point where we’ll be next season is considerably further ahead than last season.”

It’s not just in playing terms either. The Fords saw a huge overhaul of players between 2023 and 2024, but now the likes of Elie El-Zakhem, Sylvester Namo, Tex Hoy and Rowan Milnes will have a year under their belts in their new colours and should be a lot better for it. Elsewhere, Lingard has blooded in promising youngsters Fletcher Rooney, Jenson Windley and Akim Matvejev too.

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