Watch Castleford Tigers against Toronto Wolfpack in Sunday's Super League clash, live on Sky Sports Arena from 2pm.
Saturday 1 February 2020 21:14, UK
The old cliche about being able to shout down a pit and up would come a prop forward may no longer apply in the Castleford area, but it remains a hotbed of rugby league talent.
Michael Shenton can attest to that as well as anyone, having grown up playing touch rugby on the streets of nearby Pontefract to progressing through Castleford Tigers' youth system to captain the club, via a two-season stay at St Helens.
Now aged 33 and in his testimonial year at the Mend-A-Hose Jungle, Shenton is leading a squad with a strong backbone of homegrown players who are either established players or taking their first steps in Super League and sees that trend continuing.
"Cas is renowned as an area for providing rugby players throughout the competition," Shenton told Sky Sports. "You can probably look at most teams and they'll have someone from the Castleford area playing in their squad or going into the academy.
"But I think we're fortunate we've had some really good quality coming through our academy and now we're bringing the reserves back I think that's better for a team like us because we can keep players like that and grow.
"I think it will be a few years before we see the best out of the reserves because it's back to being a new concept, but once it establishes itself then we can start not losing so many players as we have done in the past.
"We've got plenty of talent in our area and I think we've seen that in our last lot of scholarship who've come up to academy level. They've been training with us in pre-season in bits and pieces, and there is some real quality in there."
“We've got plenty of talent in our area and I think we've seen that in our last lot of scholarship who've come up to academy level. There is some real quality in there.”
Shenton is doing his bit to help the next generation make the leap from academy rugby to the professional ranks, speaking to each intake of scholarship players to give them an idea of the standards expected of them and what life is like at the Tigers.
Another player from the area is playing a big part in Castleford's rise to becoming play-off regulars in recent seasons, although he is someone who did not actually pull on the club's shirt during his career.
That is none other than head coach Daryl Powell, raised in nearby Ackworth but making his name as a player with Sheffield Eagles, Keighley Cougars and Leeds Rhinos - not to mention spells in Australia with another Tigers, Balmain, and Gold Coast Seagulls.
"He never played for them, but he's a local player and that means a lot," Shenton said. "He really buys into the history and heritage of the club, which is important.
"He's a good leader, very passionate and very knowledgeable about the game, but he really wants to make individual players as good as they can be. You can see that in how we play and how the players develop underneath him.
"He listens to the players, and as a player and outside back you want to express yourself - and he definitely lets you do that. He wants to play expansive rugby, but at the same time he knows what it takes to win.
"You can't just play all fancy, you've got to deal with the consequences sometimes when you play like that and I think that's somewhere we've got to be better as a team."
Castleford kick off the season against a team they have already played this year in Super League newcomers Toronto Wolfpack, having faced them in pre-season for Shenton's testimonial game and gone down 16-10.
The nominal hosts for the first match of Sunday's double-header at Headingley are set to have Sonny Bill Williams suit up for them for the first time too, but Shenton has no worries about Castleford being able to match any of the teams in the competition.
"We know we've got the team and the quality to beat anyone on our day, but we want to make sure that's most days we're on the money with that," Shenton said.
"I think we've got to make a few changes to do that. Saints changed a few years ago and look what they turned into.
"We've got some quality local players and we're going to build it around that, and we've brought in some real quality players who are experienced, and I think will stiffen us up in the middle. We're excited about what we can do this year."
