Powell believes Cas are underdogs at Hull

Correspondent

Castleford coach Daryl Powell believes his team head into their Challenge Cup tie at Hull FC on Saturday as underdogs.

Powell feels that the Airlie Birds will be feeling confident after some fine recent results, in particular the win over Warrington, and his team will need to be on their mettle to win.

“Hull are at home and will be feeling pretty confident about themselves so we will be going in as pretty big underdogs,” the Tigers coach told his club’s official website.

“You take last year out of the equation in everything really. It is about this season and what is in front of us.

“It is a pretty tough challenge going over to Hull. They are in a run of decent form. They have won five out of the last six so it is a big challenge for us.

“The final is a bit of a way down the track, it is one game at a time, but certainly it was a great experience last year.

“We didn’t quite get the job done in the final but the whole experience everybody got a lot out of so it would be special if we could do it again but it is just one game at a time.

“This is a significant challenge based on what is happening to us at the moment.”

Powell is also under pressure because of the amount of injuries in his squad, and he is yet to finalise his line-up for the game.

“Even having named a 19 man squad I might have to change that along the way, just with people pulling out positionally. I don’t think I am going to know until the day potentially,” he said.

“The last month to six weeks has been pretty difficult. We haven’t put the same team out. It has been impossible to do that through injuries.

“It is a tough one. It is one of those situations where we just need the 17 that take the field to pull together and come up with a performance that gets a result.”