KEIGHLEY COUGARS coach Alan Kilshaw is excited about the club’s prospects for 2026 and says they won’t be in the new-look Championship just to make up the numbers.
After a difficult first half of 2025, Keighley picked up with six wins in nine going into their 18th league game at North Wales Crusaders.
They spent a single season in the Championship in 2023, following their invincible League One season the previous year.
Kilshaw said: “It’s exciting, daunting, challenging. We’ve got to make sure we’re competitive and put a competitive squad together. A lot of the players will still be here.
“We’ll be playing a lot of teams around us and potentially the likes of Halifax and other Championship teams, and there’ll be top-eight or top-ten play-offs, and we want to be in that mix.
“It’s going to be a good thing. There’s no trapdoor, so it gives you the opportunity to play.
“I’ve been involved in promoted teams myself and you’re just trying to stay up, but now we can sit down and put a plan together.
“We’ve got a number of young players who are exciting and we can have a lot more patience with them than we would do if the trapdoor is there.
“It’s something that needed to happen. The club’s taken a hit this year regarding home games, there’s been a lot of gaps.
“We’ve been told there will be 26 games across 28 weeks, and there’s cups on top of that, so our squad has got to have depth.
“I think it’s good. There’s a lot of negative press around at the moment about the changes , but we’re definitely behind them.
“Purely from a football perspective, it’s a change that needed to happen, it’s the way forward and we’ll look forward to a new bigger Championship.”
Halfback Ben Dean has undergone surgery on the calf issues which have kept him sidelined for the majority of the season.