Castleford Tigers news: star recruit Damien Cook first of 'many' signings says coach Ryan Carr
Star signing Damien Cook will be the first of “many” additions to Castleford Tigers’ squad for next season, coach Ryan Carr says.
The 34-year-old former Australia and New South Wales hooker has penned a two-year deal and Carr revealed Tigers are working hard on other recruitment for 2027. Winger Mat Feagai, who is a current teammate of Cook at NRL club St George-Illawarra Dragons, has also been linked with Castleford and Carr said: “We’ll see - there is a bit of work going on.”
Speaking at his weekly preview press conference this afternoon (Wednesday), Carr - who joined Castleford in pre-season from St George - stressed: “We are really focused on right now and Saturday’s game at York; that’s a real priority of mine, but we are also being proactive in recruitment for 2027 too.
“We are trying to find out the people we want and going after them really early and making sure we’ve got stability in our club. There will be many [new faces.”
Carr insisted that doesn’t necessarily mean wholesale departures. He added: “We have got a small squad at the moment, for many different reasons. We’ve had a lot of long injury layoffs and players have moved on from our club from the start of pre-season to now.
“We want to get to a squad of around 30 so we can create good depth in our club. With every club, if you get injuries you need to be able to maintain that consistency of performance. That’s something we feel we need to be better at as a club and recruitment is going to help us do that.”
Carr will name an initial squad for Saturday’s game at noon tomorrow. George Lawler is back in the mix after suspension and the coach confirmed George Hirst will be available following a concussion layoff.
Veteran hooker Liam Hood remains on the casualty list after suffering a long-term neck injury in last month’s win at Wigan Warriors, but Carr said: “He is doing better. He got some really good news early in the week that we can start to return him to training now.
“We are going to take our time and make sure we follow every instruction we are given, but it’s really positive and he is really happy. He is such a good guy to have around the club, we have been missing him on and off the field and we’re really happy we can get him back into training and progress him day to day, but it’ll still be a couple of months.”