NEW Castleford Tigers owner Martin Jepson has promised investment on and off the field to ensure the Super League club is challenging for trophies in the not-so-distant future.
Jepson’s takeover of the Tigers was confirmed earlier this month, with the property tycoon taking 100 percent of shares from Ian and Janet Fulton.
The 63-year-old has already invested heavily in the club, including a seven-figure fee towards the back end of last year to ensure the Tigers hit a Grade A on the IMG rankings.
But now Jepson has promised more to build the club on the field, with Danny McGuire’s men currently third bottom of Super League with just three wins from 12 games.
“The initial plan was to make sure we were in Super League and we did that with flying colours last year with a Grade A,” Jepson told Sky Sports.
“The next thing to do is to make us the best we can be and make us sustainable in the long term. We know we’ve got a lot to do.
“The club has lacked investment for many years and we want to put that back in and build the team back up again.
“I inherited a position here where we had set certain limitations on the salary cap and we have moved those on a little bit.
“You can’t change things overnight, you have to do things incrementally. We’ve made some signings in the past few weeks – albeit short-term ones – but it gives a flavour of what we want to do.
“The important thing from a squad side of thing is to build on that going forward and make sure the players that we bring in to replace them are of a similar stature.”
The key for Jepson is to ensure that Castleford compete and eventually join the hunt for trophies.
“Let’s take it step by step and let’s build the club. I want us to compete. When every team is playing to its full potential, every team can beat every other team in this league.
“A club like Castleford needs to be seen to be competing. We have been close but the ambition is to try and win something but we’ve got to understand where we are at the moment.
“We’ve got to build confidence in the fanbase and in the team to challenge again.
“The important thing is we have got to be sustainable. The club has to be here in 10, 20, 30 years’ time.”
The new Castleford owner also gave an update on the stadium redevelopment.
“We’ve got the plans passed through to redevelop, we’ve got money due to us but that’s out of our hands because it comes from another development in the area.”
