Castleford Tigers head coach Craig Lingard has made a plea to his side’s supporters as their IMG status appears to be hanging on one thing.
Castleford beat Hull FC 39-20 this weekend, confirming that they couldn’t finish any lower than tenth in the league this season.
The Tigers released a statement this week, updating fans further on the work the club have been doing to increase their grading ahead of the end of the season, with the team looking almost certain to finish 10th in the league.
Included in the statement was detail on all five ‘pillars’ of the grading, and suggested that the side were certain to at least increase their grading to between 14.51 and 14.64, which would have placed them in eighth within the indicative grading from 2023.
However, there is one thing that could actually get them a ‘Grade A’ status.
Asked how important a strong finish to the season was for the club’s IMG grading, Lingard responded, in the post-match press conference:
“It would help us in respect of… if we can finish ninth then we get points for finishing ninth over the next three years.
“I think regardless of what happens – 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, next week it looks like it’s going to be very very close to being a packed house.”
He continued: “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.”
Indeed, if the Tigers can achieve an average of 7,500 attendance over the past three years – which it seems they are right on the cusp of – they would achieve an extra 0.5 points.
That would, if the information in the statement is all correct, confirm a Grade A status with a score of between 15.01 and 15.14.
