Castleford Tigers head coach Daryl Powell has once again explained his infamous rotation policy, insisting nobody is being left out of the side on performance-related issues at the moment.
Powell has left Justin Carney out of his squad to face Hull FC tonight, but he says it is all part of a plan to keep his squad fresh for the business end of the season. He pointed to it adding extra motivation for the players too – citing the example of Luke Dorn, who was left out two weeks ago, yet returned with a stellar performance against Leeds last Thursday.
“I’d planned the last three weeks, and I wanted to stick with what we’ve planned. We’ve got good depth in our squad, and it’s about the whole squad doing their bit. You can roll throughout with 17 or 18 players across the season, but you’ll have a bunch of blokes who are worn out come the end of the season,” Powell said.
“I think we’ve planned in a pretty positive way to give everyone an opportunity throughout the season, and we’ve done that again. There’s nobody left out through performance at the moment, it’s about maintaining our energy levels across the remainder of the season.”
Powell also said his side panicked a touch too much last week against the Rhinos, but couldn’t fault the overall performance as they battled to a superb 24-24 draw against their West Yorkshire rivals.
“I thought the game was a bit frantic; we opened Leeds up quite a bit but we tended to panic. We need to make better decisions when we’re getting through the line, but it’s hard to argue about last week’s performance, because I thought we were very good.”
