Castleford Tigers 'in a good place' ahead of new season says head coach Danny McGuire

​A week-long training camp ended with a 50-8 victory in a pre-season friendly with Valencia Huracanes and Cas are now well on the way to being ready for the start of the 2025 Super League season.

Their next step is an all together more competitive pre-season encounter at Wakefield Trinity in Luke Gale’s testimonial on Friday night and McGuire is hoping his players show the benefit of their warm weather training.

He said: "We’re in a good place, the group’s tight, they are enjoying what they are doing and are working hard and understand what’s needed.

"We have still got a few areas I’d like to tidy up, which we’ll work on over the next couple of weeks, but I’m happy. It’s exciting.

“The week’s being really successful, we’ve got plenty out of it.

"Selfishly the connection with the players, the time spent together, being able to work on loads of combinations.

"We got through the game unscathed. We had to tone down the contact down a bit because of a change of surface, but it’s been really worthwhile.

"I really enjoyed the game and there’s plenty of Cas fans supporting us – they seem like they have had a great weekend too.”

A late change of venue saw the game against a Spanish select side played on an artificial pitch at Pavelló Cobert Carlos Pellicer with lowered contact.

“It’s difficult to sell to rugby players that they have to tone the contact down and not play on instinct a little bit, but I thought the lads did really well,” explained McGuire.

“Some of the Valencia boys are inexperienced, but it was a safe game, it never looked like anyone was going to get injured. It was very respectful.

“We got out of it what we wanted really. Our halves controlled the game well. We scored some nice tries. We conceded a couple which I’m not too happy about, but we’ll fix that up.

“It was good fun. There were a lot of locals watching the game and that’s what we’re here for, to spread the word of rugby league. This is the start of something which could potentially get bigger.

"Speaking to some of their lads, they were really excited to rub shoulders with Super League players. Hopefully it’s something we can do more long term and we can work on it and make it better for next year.”