Easter weekend has arrived which means that it is time for ‘Rivals Round’ in the Super League XXVIII season, one which gets underway on Thursday evening when two sides kick off what should be a great few days of rugby league.
The Castleford Tigers take on local rivals Wakefield Trinity to open up the weekend in a match which will be shown live on TV. These two have made terrible starts to the season so there is more than just bragging rights at stake here.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Arena channel with the build-up at The Jungle beginning at 7.30pm ahead of a kick off at 8pm.
Castleford Tigers
To say that this hasn’t been the start to the season that the Castleford Tigers would have wanted would be something of an understatement. They have lost six of the seven matches they have played and even the contest which they won the Leeds Rhinos hardly turned up at all and pretty much rolled over and had their tummies tickled. The Tigers have already dispersed with the services of Lee Radford as head coach but are yet to completely replace him.
If there is a crumb of comfort from this poor start to the season Castleford have made it comes in the form that they don’t need to search too hard to find out where they are going wrong. They haven’t put 20 points on the board since the opening game of the season so they have to come up with a lot more in attack. They haven’t gone particularly well defensively either but to be fair it has been elite teams scoring against them.
Wakefield Trinity
If the season hasn’t gone the way the Castleford Tigers would have wanted then it certainly hasn’t for Wakefield Trinity. There were a lot of fears that this would be a tough campaign for Trinity long before it got underway and sadly for them those concerns look like they carried too much weight. They are yet to win a match in seven outings and in four of those matches they haven’t even scored a point. Even this early in the season this feels like a relegation four pointer.
You get the feeling that the time has come for Wakefield to give the ball some air and take some risks and look to make something happen because if they are beaten here you would think that they are staring down the barrel of being relegated. Wakefield have to do something to put the opposition under pressure. It is criminal to not score a single point in over half of the matches they have played. Regardless of their defence, if they can’t start scoring points they are in big trouble.
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Team News
Castleford Tigers will be without Gareth Widdop for this match but his half-back partner Jacob Miller is expected to line up against his former club. Niall Evalds is set to return from injury but Adam Milner continues his suspension.
Wakefield Trinity could have Nathan Mason available to them after the forward has joined from Huddersfield Giants. Kevin Proctor and Liam Hood both return from injury and Will Dagger is expected to feature again.
Betting
It is hard to see any positives for Wakefield Trinity heading into this match. You could say it is clutching at straws to find any within the Castleford Tigers as well but the return of Niall Evalds does at least offer them the chance to have more key players in the right positions which will at least offer up some kind of positivity. I don’t think the Tigers are a particularly good side but they are so much better than what they have shown this season whereas I’m not sure that is the case with Wakefield.
The fact that Wakefield haven’t even scored a point in four out of seven matches this season throws up serious warning signals and it isn’t as though they have been keeping the points off the board at the other end. Castleford haven’t caught fire in attack yet but when I look at the personnel they have it surely is only a matter of time before they do and I don’t think a 10 point handicap is beyond them here. I’ll take the home side to pile more misery on their local rivals.
Tips
Back Castleford Tigers (-10) to beat Wakefield Trinity for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
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