Castleford Tigers coach Daryl Powell believes his side have nothing to fear when they travel to league leaders Hull FC on Friday night.
The Tigers kick off their Super 8s campaign with a trip to Lee Radford’s side this weekend, looking to begin to claw back the seven-point gap between themselves and fourth-placed St Helens.
But Powell told TotalRL that his side should not be daunted by the task of facing a Hull side competing for silverware on all fronts this year – they should instead take heart from their previous performances against FC this season: which include a victory at the KCOM Stadium way back at the start of the year.
“I’m not worried about catching them cold because they’d started superbly in round three and we beat them,” he said.
“We then outscored them in terms of tries when they came to our place so there’s nothing for us to fear there. They’re a good side of course, everyone knows that having watched them.
“They’ve got speed, size and plenty of ball-playing ability so they’ll be a challenge, and I like what Lee Radford has done there.”
Powell insists his side are still struggling with injury problems ahead of the start of the Super 8s – but says that he will be boosted by the return of at least three key players after a two-week break recently.
“The break has been good. We’ve had a few days off and players have got away with their families which is handy at this time of the year.
“We’re pretty skinny still; we had 17 players who couldn’t train again on Tuesday and it’s been like that all year. The game is tough, there’s no question of that, and there’s teams who have had lots of injuries – and we’re one of them. Although it’s been tough, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves.
“We’ll get a few back. We had a few late pullouts for the Wakefield game like Denny and Rangi just before that. Lee Jewitt has trained this week too so he could potentially be good, and Denny and Rangi have trained.
“There’s potentially three or four, because Luke Dorn could come back in too but he hasn’t trained yet so we’ll make the call Thursday.”
