Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard has confirmed interest in a potential signing from an NRL club, but admits a move for one of Super League’s big names is unrealistic.
The Tigers are looking to add three or four players to their squad for next year and Australian centre Zac Cini is one name on their radar.
The 24-year-old former Australian Schoolboys representative made four NRL appearances for Wests Tigers in 2021, but has been confined to the second-string New South Wales Cup since joining Parramatta Eels.
Speaking to the press, Castleford Tigers boss Lingard confirmed: “He is someone we have spoken to, among a number of others. We are being really picky about the people we identify and speak to.
“They’ve got to be the right sort of people, the right age bracket, what they want to achieve…they have to tick certain boxes. He does that.
“If we are wanting to bring in an NRL player who has played 150 games in certain positions – like half-backs, full-backs and centres – they are people who command a lot of money.
“We have got to make sure players we are bringing in, if they haven’t played 50-60 NRL games, have the potential to do that – someone who might want to be here for two or three seasons, then go back to the NRL and be a starting player over there. If they do a good job for us while they are over here, that’s brilliant.”
Speculation is growing over half-back Lachlan Lam’s future at Leigh Leopards, but he won’t be joining Castleford Tigers, according to Lingard.
The 2023 Challenge Cup winner is being eyed up by clubs on both sides of the world amid a contract wrangle with his current side and Lingard admitted: “He’d definitely interest me, you’d be daft not to be interested in somebody of his quality.”
But he stressed: “I don’t think that’s going to be realistic or viable. It sounds like there’s conflicting stories coming out of both camps and we’re certainly not going to get involved in that.”
The transfer deadline to sign players for this season is two weeks away, on August 2 and Lingard doesn’t expect to complete any business before then.
“I’d like to bring some people in just to give us a bit of a boost coming into the last nine-10 games of the season, but we’ve got to make sure what we are doing is right for the club,” he stressed
“As a coach you want to bring in players to strengthen your squad if you can, but as we are sitting at the minute injury-wise, we’ve not got too many out, other than five or six long-term ones who are potentially going to be out for the rest of the season.
“It would be nice to get a centre into the club, but we don;t want to bring anybody in for the sake of it.
“We’ve got a three-year plan we are looking to push through and part of that is giving young players an opportunity over the next season or two.
“Even if somebody came in tomorrow and gave us another £500-600,000, I think the wrong thing for us to do would be to go out and spend that straight away. We’ve got a transition, bringing people in and bringing people through and we want to stick with that.”