Hull FC and Tex Hoy meet for the first time since the player left the club this Friday night, with Simon Grix hoping to keep the Australian full-back ‘quiet’ as he pulls on the Castleford Tigers shirt for the fourth time.
Hoy has had an encouraging start to his Castleford career, contributing two try assists on his debut against London before adding three more against Leigh, not to mention a try.
And while the heavy defeat that followed to St Helens was a humbling experience, Grix is still weary of Hoy’s threats, with the interim head coach putting the ‘pressure’ of playing for Hull FC as one potential reason for his indifferent form while in the Black and White, with the player, through his own admission, struggling to hit the heights that he desired.
“I don’t live in Hull, I travel in, but from what I can gather, it’s a city that is obsessed with rugby league,” Grix said. “There is a certain pressure, and when things aren’t going well, as a former NRL player, you cop a bit.
“Sometimes, when you’re not going well, it can be a hard place to live. That’s fair to say, and Tex wasn’t playing at the right level for long enough, nor was the team, so he probably didn’t have the best experience. But he’s gone, and we wish him well. He’ll be doing his thing, and we have to make sure we’re on our game on Friday.
“Of course, Tex will want a good performance. He’s only human. Everyone wants to go back to the team they’ve left and go well, but Tex was the first to admit, which was pretty big of him, to be fair, that he didn’t give us the best version of him often enough.
“Hopefully, he doesn’t go well this week, but often a change is as good as a rest, and he’s freshened himself up, and I hope we can see the Tex that we know is in there—just not against us. He’s a very good player, and he’s shown some nice touches in his time there so far, but hopefully we can keep him quiet this week.”
As for Castleford, Grix is expecting another tough game for his Hull side, who have won just one game all season. On the contrary, the Fords sit three points and one place above them in the Super League table as they look to instill a long-term growth plan under head coach Craig Lingard.
“I think they’ve been what they’ve said they’re going to be,” Grix explained. “In the off-season, they anchored expectations around what they’re spending, who they’re signing, and how they’re using their money around the IMG stuff.
“I think they’ve been a team of try-hards, but they have some quality as well in the likes of Joe Westerman. Sam Wood is showing some great form for them in the centres as well. They’re a good side, and they play very well at home as well, so we’ve got a tough fixture in front of us.”
“It’s significant because we’re competitors, and it’s a professional sport,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there, perform, represent the club and make sure people want to come back through these gates to watch the team week in, week out.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re showing that we’re making strides and still getting better. We talk all the time about it being a long-term project, but you’ve got to have short-term wins as well. For us to maintain the confidence we’ve got and the growth we believe we’re doing, these are the games that we’ve got to be winning.”
Castleford have also been dealt a significant injury blow ahead of the clash, with Louis Senior out for around three months with a quad injury.
“We thought it was a dead leg, but we sent him for a scan, and he’s ruptured his quad and is going to be out between 12 to 14 weeks, unfortunately,” Lingard added. “When your luck is against you, you seem to pick these things up.”