New head coach Ryan Carr has promised that his Castleford Tigers team will play to its strengths in 2026.
Carr has no set style he wants to impose on his new team with winning rugby league the aim, whether based on attacking style or defensive stability.
“I want a team that competes really hard,” he said.
“There’s a few non-negotiables that we’ll operate with. The level we compete at and how hard our effort is every game is going to be judged and something we’re going to value really high.
“I have never been a coach who has gone in with a fixed mindset on this is how I want a team to play because we have to play to our strengths.
“It’s what a pre-season is for – it’s going to be a really important time for us to gel together as a group and figure each other out. We’ll come out the other side of that with a clear identity and a clear style of play that we know works for us.
“But until we get our feet on the ground and start training together I don’t really want to comment too much about that. But I will say we are going to compete really hard and our effort levels are going to be extremely high – we are going to do that consistently and we are going to demand that of ourselves.”
Carr is making no predictions on where he thinks Cas can finish in his first season in charge, but he is aware of the desire at the club to get back among the clubs competing for top six play-off spots.
He added: “There’s always long term goals and there’s always short term goals in anything anyone does. I’m definitely not coming in with a fixed mindset about anything, I’m coming in open and wanting to set clear standards here early on.
“I believe that any team can win any game they turn up to. There’s no rule about how long you’ve got to wait, we’ve got to want to win everything we do from day one at pre-season to the time we get to round one and round two onwards.
“If we have an attitude of wanting to win everything that’s put in front of us and compete hard to do that then I feel like the results will take care of themselves.
“We can’t control where we’re going to finish on the ladder – we can control how hard we work and the level of performance we put up out there on the field.”
Leave a Reply