IT’S fair to say that Castleford Tigers endured a mightily difficult 2023 Super League season.
Locked in a two-way battle to avoid relegation with local rivals Wakefield Trinity, the Tigers managed to do that by the skin of their teeth, escaping relegation by four points.
A massive turnover of players has since occurred at The Jungle since the end of the season, with one of those exiting the club Kenny Edwards, who has since signed for Queensland Cup side Mackay Cutters on a two-year deal.
Edwards has explained that pre-season set the tone for the disastrous year – as well as the lack of players actually on the field for the Tigers throughout the season.
“Where do I start? There were a few things, we had no coaches all pre-season, they were on World Cup duty which meant they needed a break after so they went away,” Edwards told League Express.
“It was hard for us to have a pre-season and by the time the season had started we had done no reps together. We had new halfbacks and a fullback so it was always going to be tough.
“We just didn’t the start the way we wanted to and once the confidence was low, it was hard to turn it around.”
Edwards pointed to injuries destroying Castleford’s consistency and how 2023 was the “toughest year” of the 34-year-old’s career.
“Then we lost players to injuries, that was massive for us. For my second year in a row at Cas we couldn’t keep blokes on the field, everyone was injured all of the time,” Edwards continued.
“We lost Radders (Lee Radford) and Lasty (Andy Last) tried to come in but we were hammered with injuries whilst Lasty was trying to coach.
“We had academy kids for the middle part of the year. It was always going to make it tough, we just couldn’t keep people on the field so when one would come back another one would get injured. We had no one during the middle part of the season, it’s the toughest year of my career by far.”
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