CASTLEFORD TIGERS have announced their dual-registration partnership deal with Championship club Halifax Panthers.
With the Tigers selecting a large 37-man squad to tackle the 2023 Super League season, players who find themselves outside of Lee Radford’s matchday squad will be able to still gain access to minutes on the field with the Panthers.
It will also provide Castleford squad members who are in the rehabilitation phase of returning from injury, the chance to get up to match speed representing Halifax before stepping back into the Fords First Team fold.
Castleford Tigers’ Head of Rugby & Development, Danny Wilson, put forward how this collaboration will benefit the Club across the board.
“It’s a really exciting time for us at the club with some of the partners we’ve got. It’s an agreement that works for us two-fold as we’ve been very focussed on building our player pathway from the bottom up so it’s great to have the partnership with Midlands and now the Panthers. Also, with the Reserves it allows players coming into our pathway with that bandwidth of playing opportunities.
“We’ve got a healthy and big squad with some great Super League players but unfortunately at this time of year, some of them won’t make it into Lee’s squad so partnering with Halifax allows those top-end players the opportunity to gain valuable minutes at a top club like Halifax.
“It gives players who have just graduated our Academy, the challenge of Reserve grade, in League 1 with Midlands, or in the Championship with Halifax. Our pathway is now is really comprehensive.”
Halifax Panthers Director of Rugby Richard Durgan also affirmed the positive factors the agreement will have on his club, by saying:
“We’d like to thank Huddersfield for the last couple of years, but we just thought it was a more natural fit with Castleford. We seem to have a similar feeling and similar values around dual registration. There’s a few natural connections there with Scott Murrell on the staff there. We look forward to working with them.”
“We’ve had some very productive meetings already in the short term so hopefully exciting for the season to come and hopefully it can be of use to us. Dual registration for Championship clubs is obviously more of an insurance policy as we’d like to pull in some quality as and when we need it. We felt that Castleford bought into the idea of giving us some quality players to compliment our squad and we look forward to a successful partnership moving forward.”