Castleford Tigers looking for one last push in bid for grading points to stay in Super League

The club is pushing hard for a big attendance, which they believe will be a huge help in their case to be included in Super League next year under the new grading system.

Clinching a top 10 finish as they did with a win at Hull last Saturday will strengthen the Tigers’ case and the club reckons all the off the field improvements that have been made this year will significantly increase the score they were given in the provisional ratings that were made at the end of last season.

But there could still be room for a further improvement as a big crowd for the last home game against Leigh on Friday is needed to ensure the average crowd for Cas home games is over 7,500 for the past three years – thereby earning an extra 0.5 points to the Tigers’ score.

Castleford believe they have got their rating up to between 14.51 and 14.64 before the crowd figure is taken into account so would be close to getting the coveted grade A licence – which guarantees no relegation – if they can achieve their aim.

With three games remaining Lingard wants his team to have a strong finish to the season on the field and they can still finish ninth, but knows off field matters are likely to be the big discussion points with the grading to be announced in October.

He said: “Whether we win three or lose three it’s not going to have an impact on our IMG status, that’s going to be elsewhere.

"I think what will impact on our IMG status is the attendance next week that will hopefully tip us over the average attendance and I think looking at social media, the way that ticket sales are going, it looks like it’s going to be very very close to being a packed house.

“Hopefully that will go towards us getting the IMG points and if we can tick off another couple of wins, then we might get that extra position that I guess will help us in the points with the IMG.

“Whether you agree with it or not, we know as a club what we need to do off the field to make sure that we get those points.

"There’s a tick box list that we’ve been doing, all the people behind the scenes have been doing all season, and hopefully that’s going to cement our place in Super League for next year.”

Lingard was delighted to end a losing run with the 39-20 win over Hull, but had mixed feelings over the performance.

He commented: “There are loads of lessons for us to learn from that.

"We allowed them to come back into it.

“But being down to 12 men, 11 men and then 12 again (after the sin-binning of Sylvester Namo and Liam Horne), I thought the determination and work rate they showed was what we’ve been trying to put into them this year.

"I think that period was what won us the game.”

“The win was significant because we had not had one in a while.”

Lingard praised the half-back duo who were chosen at Hull, with Rowan Milnes scoring a try as well as kicking seven goals and landing a drop-goal and 18-year-old Jenson Windley scoring a try in only his second senior match.

He added: “We put a lot of pressure on Rowan Milnes to manage that game. I thought he was outstanding.

“It’s a proud moment for Jenson (to score his first try). He’s a Hull lad and all his family are Hull supporters as well so he might not be flavour of the month in the Windley household.

“But it’s great for a young kid like Jenson to handle the occasions like he has, last week making his debut against a top class Warrington team and then scoring a try and again not looking out of place.”