DARYL Powell has revealed how re-connecting people at Castleford set them on the way to the biggest game in their 91-year history.
The Tigers’ boss can seemingly walk on water after guiding them to the League Leaders’ Shield and the Grand Final.
Listen to some and Cas are the best side in Super League for years – winning 26 out of 31 games and scoring 988 points certainly points towards that claim.
But things have not always been as good. When he joined from Featherstone in 2013, he found a club that was pretty much at rock bottom both on and off the pitch.
And for the local lad who watched Castleford from the age of 13, that had to change before he could even think about getting them to the Grand Final.
“I found what I thought was a skinny squad,” said Powell. “I didn’t think it was big enough.
“And the culture of the club needed changing. There needed to be more awareness and responsibility from people towards what they did as a job.
“There needed to be a re-connection with the fans really and with the past players as neither of those groups believed what was being done was right.
“We did all of those things and that created a positive force moving forward. On the field we’ve signed good quality players and players we thought had a lot of improvement in them.
“We’ve kept our best players, which is something Castleford has struggled to do in the past, and moulded them all together.”
Powell has Grand Final experience after playing in the first one back in 1998 for Saturday’s opponents Leeds.
But do not expect him to be the same as he was back then, when he was almost a lesson in how not to do it.
He added: “I’ll approach this one with a bit more calmness. Back then it was my first and I got hyped up a fair bit for it but I think I’ll be more composed.
“I wanted to play that game so early in the week and you can’t do that.”
One person guaranteed to be a bag of nerves, though, is Powell’s wife Janice, who was caught on camera in floods of tears as Cas trailed St Helens 22-20 in the semi-final before Luke Gale’s extra time heroics saw them win 23-22.
And her husband knows it could be the same story again as he has seen it before.
Powell added: “She never takes any notice of me anyway. She gets so caught up in it and knows how much it means to me, that’s why she’s like she is.
“She actually gets more nervous than me but I think she’ll be all right.
“We’ve seen the footage of the St Helens game but she’s not one for publicity. She was saying, ‘Why did they do that? Why have they got me on there?’
“I know she gets really nervous and the game was such an emotional one.”
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