HAVE IMG damaged this year’s Super League competition?
Despite Castleford’s poor results so far this season, I continue to be impressed by their coach Craig Lingard for his honesty in dealing with the media.
The Tigers got hit for 50 points by Huddersfield in their last home game, which appeared to suggest that their squad is some way short of an acceptable standard.
And on Saturday they went down by 40 points to 14 against Catalans in Perpignan, which was a scoreline that appeared to please Lingard, given the weakness of the squad at his command.
Last week he delivered a message to the Castleford supporters that has surely never been delivered before, as he explained the impact of the IMG grading system on the club’s performances on the field against Huddersfield.
“With the squad we’ve got, we are going to get days like that – 70 percent of our squad aren’t experienced Super League players,” Lingard said.
“That’s a decision we have made as a club. We are concentrating on IMG and the future of the club to safeguard us in Super League, which is the right thing to do.
“There is a plan in place, we will bring in some more senior players for next year and then the after. Those year
we have now might get 15 or 20 Super League games this year and then the same next year and the year after.
“Those that have developed this year will hopefully have played 50 or 60 Super League games then and then the players we bring in will add a different dimension to us.”
In saying that, Lingard is admitting that the club is not fully focused on its performances on the field, but is committing more resources to trying to improve its IMG grading score off the field.
“It’s difficult at times because as a coach, a player, a director, an owner and a supporter, you want your team to win every week and that’s clearly not going to happen this year,” he added.
“We are in a rebuild and where the game is going with IMG – whether you agree with it or not – promotion and relegation isn’t decided on the field, which has allowed the club this year to concentrate on financial efforts off the field to make sure we have a Super League future.
“If we had done that the other way round and put the money into the squad this season, however well we did in the league, and it came to the end of the season and the club hadn’t done what they needed to do and we got relegated, then what’s the point?
“There will be short-term pain for longer-term gain. There is a plan behind the scenes, we are looking to establish a team and it’s about developing these players we’ve got.”
What we now have, it appears, is a situation in which some clubs may focus on other matters rather than their performances on the field. And that will be to the detriment of Super League.
We all know that London haven’t invested heavily in their squad this year, for example, because their grading means that they have no chance of staying in Super League after this season. So why bother spending big money on a squad just for one season?
It all suggests that the Super League competition this season has been compromised by the grading system rather than enhanced by it.
And what will happen to those clubs that do fall through the trapdoor at the end of the season, perhaps because they don’t have enough social media followers rather than because of their performances on the field?
It will need to be very carefully managed.
Head clashes down
THE RFL had a Council meeting involving all the clubs last Wednesday and one item of information the governing body revealed to the assembled audience was the progress being made in eliminating dangerous tackles to the head and neck.
Apparently it commissioned a study of the five seasons from 2018 to 2022 and found that approximately twelve percent of all tackles made contact with the head or neck of the ball carrier.
This season so far, that figure has fallen to three percent.
It’s maybe too early to conclude that the campaign to reduce the tackle height is succeeding, but the early signs are undoubtedly very promising. On this issue at least, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful.
The problem with Hull FC
WHAT do all the following players have in common?
Jake Connor, Tom Briscoe, Connor Wynne, Hakim Miloudi, Adam Swift, Ben McNamara, Marc Sneyd, Jordan Abdull, Liam Watts, Jez Litten, Tevita Satae, Dean Hadley, Manu Ma’u, Joe Westerman.
Of course the answer is that they have all played for Hull FC in the relatively recent past, but they have all been allowed to move on to other clubs with varying degrees of success, while Hull appear to have concentrated largely on recruitment from overseas.
You have to wonder what is going on at the club when they are taken apart so easily by a Leigh Leopards side led by Matt Moylan, but with recently released Ben McNamara as his halfback partner.
The saddest sight of the weekend, at least for me, was the walkout of Hull supporters long before the final hooter at the MKM Stadium on Saturday.
The Hull fans are among the most faithful in the game, but for how much longer can they keep turning up to watch their team being hammered?
When Hull won the Challenge Cup in 2016 and 2017, those successes should have launched the club into the Rugby League stratosphere, with a Grand Final victory closely on the horizon.
Instead we have seen bad appointments, bad recruitment, a lack of heart and their supporters being driven to distraction.
Looking in from the outside, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about the changes that need to be made at the club.
But I would recommend to its owner Adam Pearson that he heads over to Wigan or St Helens to find out what it takes to be a successful club.
Championship changes
The RFL has confirmed its wish to see two leagues of twelve clubs each below Super League from 2026, retaining promotion and relegation between the two divisions.
In last week’s League Express Readers’ Poll we asked our readers what structure they would prefer.
Unfortunately our website crashed on Friday, meaning that we were unable this week to report the final poll figures.
Nonetheless, the option that attracted the most votes was a merger of the Championship and League One into one competition, with a graded fixture list.
And I’m quite certain that that option would have been a much better outcome for the game as a whole.
