Castleford Tigers will have forward Daniel Smith back in contention for Friday’s trip to Hull Kingston Rovers in the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup.
The prop missed last week’s Super League win over Toulouse Olympique with a calf issue but is due to return, as is Cheyse Blair having featured for the Tigers’ Reserves at the weekend.
Gareth O’Brien, Greg Eden and Joe Westerman are also clear to play after taking various knocks in the Toulouse game.
“We’ve got a clean bill of health,” Castleford head coach Lee Radford said of fresh concerns. “Dan Smith is back in contention as well.”
They are without George Lawler, however, after the back-row received a three-match suspension, and Radford said he had no issue with the punishment though called for consistency.
“I can accept the ban, I just look for consistency,” he said. “I’ve seen some others that have not been punished as heavily, that’s my only frustration.”
A past Challenge Cup winner as both a player and a coach, Radford wants his players to rise the occasion of “a real big” match taking on Hull KR for a place in the semi-finals.
And he expects his side to be far better than the league meeting at Craven Park in February when the Tigers were comfortably beaten, having found form in recent weeks and won two games running for the first time under his stewardship.
“We look chalk and cheese (from before), everybody is on board with things now,” said Radford. “It’s taken a while to get some blokes to buy into that but I think they’re now seeing the benefits of it.”