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No doubt this game on Saturday will be headlined as Daryl Powell’s return to his former home for the first time, but with the end of the season getting ever so closer, both teams are needing a massive performance’s as the play-off hunt is getting feisty.
After an amazing Magic Weekend in Newcastle where we saw some incredible Rugby League, we are back to seeing wooden seats and burger vans inside the ground after Castleford came out of St. James Park with a loss against their rivals Leeds Rhinos who have turned a corner under new coach Rohan Smith and were victorious in that game by 34-20.
On the flip side, the visiting team this weekend in Warrington beat a deflated Catalan Dragons outfit with the Dracs missing a total of eight key players, but don’t let that take away from how well Warrington truly played.
New signings Jake Wardle and Matty Nicholson crossed over for their first Wire tries with also Gareth Widdop, George Williams, Josh Thewlis and Stefan Ratchford helping their side to be four points behind the play-off places in a 36-10 win.
Warrington come into this game with sightly disappoining form where they have only won two in their last five against Hull FC and Catalan Dragons but have been beaten by Salford, Wakefield and Leeds where Daryl Powell stated that his team should of beat Salford and Wakefield but we’ve only got ourselves to blame for not getting over the line.
Castleford however have won three out of their last five games with wins over Catalan, Toulouse and Huddersfield but fell short to Leeds at Magic Weekend and were also beaten by the Wigan Warriors where they were actually leading at half-time but Wigan’s class came into play to win 32-12.
When these two sides played each other back in the reverse fixture in the second game of the season at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, The Wire won the game by some margin with tries coming from Matty Ashton, George Williams, Robbie Mulhern and Josh Charnley getting two tries with a dominant 34-10 win.
Daryl Powell spent eight brilliant years with the Castleford Tigers and a lot of Cas fans will say he’s the greatest coach they have ever seen.
Powell arrived at Castleford at the start of 2013 from Featherstone and at the time, Cas were always fighting relegation and scrapping staying up but since his arrival he’s took them to two Challenge Cup finals in 2013 and 2021. He also took them to the top of the league in 2017 and went to the Grand Final that same year but couldn’t quite get over the line to win any silverware.
In his eight year reign at his home-town club, he won 129 games and had 85 losses in a 219 game career at Cas with a win percentage of 59.
Player to watch:
There’s a handful of players you can look out for in that Castleford team. Captain fantastic Paul McShane? King Kenny Edwards? But instead, I have chosen someone who in my eyes has been one of the best performers of the season and it’s Joe Westerman.
Westerman will be coming up against his former side where he played for two and a half years. He has been highly influential for his Conrad’s and is massively rated in and around the club at Castleford.
The 32-year old has played every game so far this season and he has made up to 1857 meters, made 34 tackle busts and completed 635 tackles.
On the other side, you have talent all over the place in the Warrington side but we haven’t quite seen the potential that the team can play too, you can’t look far past star half-back George Williams.
Williams has been low in confidence this season but when he’s shining he is a danger man, and the last couple of weeks ever since Shaun Wane picked him for his England side to play against the Combined Nations, he’s got a smile back on his face and has returned to playing his best Rugby.
The 27-year old has five tries so far this season whilst setting up eight and the half-back has ran over 1489 meters in the 14 games he’s played in with an average gain of 6,45.
Team News:
Castleford will be pleased to see captain Paul McShane return to the squad after serving his one-match suspension and half-back Gareth O’Brien also makes a welcome comeback to the 21-man line-up after a stint out through injury. The only absentee from last weekend’s pack is prop forward Liam Watts who picked up a two-game ban in the Tigers’ loss to the Rhinos. Jake Trueman is also sidelined for the season with an ACL Injury.
Castleford Tigers 21-man squad: Niall Evalds, Derrell Olpherts, Jake Mamo, Bureta Faraimo, Danny Richardson, Paul McShane, George Lawler, Kenny Edwards, Adam Milner, Joe Westerman, George Griffin, Mahe Fonua, Alex Sutcliffe, Daniel Smith, Greg Eden, Cheyse Blair, Suaia Matangi, Brad Martin, Gareth O’Brien, Jason QareQare, Alex Mellor.
Warrington will again be without Prop forwards Mike Cooper and Kyle Amor with injuries. Gareth Widdop also misses out with a shoulder injury that he sustained scoring a try in the win in Newcastle, sees the half-back sidelined for a lengthy period. Youngster Tom Whitehead is named in the matchday squad for the first time this season.
Warrington Wolves 21-man squad: Matty Ashton, Joe Bullock, Daryl Clark, Jason Clark, Ben Currie, Matt Davis, Riley Dean, James Harrison, Oliver Holmes, Peter Mata’utia, Greg Minikin, Tom Mikaele, Robbie Mulhern, Matty Nicholson, Stefan Ratchford, Josh Thewlis, Danny Walker, Jake Wardle, Tom Whitehead, George Williams, Connor Wrench.
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