CASTLEFORD TIGERS have been rocked by the news that one of their stars could sit out for the rest of the season.
Head coach Andy Last confirmed that Castleford fullback Niall Evalds could sit out the year with a pectoral injury that requires surgery.
“Niall requires surgery on his pectoral tear and he will miss the majority of the season and potentially the season,” Last said.
“It’s a huge blow, beginning of the year you think you can get your spine on the field.
“We’ve got Gareth Widdop back there and giving him a chance at 1 and moving Broady (Jack Broadbent) into the halfback position.
“Will Tate can also play there, he played there as a junior.”
Last also gave an update on Greg Eden as well as the illness doing the rounds in the camp.
“Greg is a couple of weeks away, he’s just coming back from a hamstring issue which has gone down into a calf issue.
“He is a high performance athlete and we need to make sure he is 100% right before we consider him for selection.
“Albert Vete is a calf, history has repeated itself from his time at Hull KR. He picked that up over a month ago.
“We got him back to something like and thought we was ok, he returned to running and felt it tighten up again. We had to go back to the drawing board.”
Last, however, will have Bureta Faraimo and Liam Watts back from suspension as well as Elliott Wallis – who was cup tied – and Jacob Miller.
“It’s good to have some bodies back, we touched on the issues we had last week leading into the cup game but we had an eye on in the league and the short turnaround.
“We’ve only got one off with illness which is a young lad called Bailey Dawson. He is still feeling some effects from the illness. George Griffin still has a cough and a splutter but we are all ok really.
“I just think it is flying around, parents doing school runs and the kids have all got it. You can’t control the home environment and it’s just one of those things.”
