'He's been outstanding': Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard praises Liam Watts response as he confirms RFL meeting

Watts will sit out Castleford's next four games following his red card for a shoulder to the head of Tyler Dupree in last week's round one defeat to Wigan Warriors.

The club put forward mitigating factors but could not prevent the experienced prop from being hit with an 11th ban in two years.

Lingard has been heartened by his team's reaction to the early setback.

"It's tough but we've not let it impact us a great deal," he said ahead of Sunday's trip to Salford Red Devils.

"To be fair to Wattsy, he's been outstanding this week in training. He knows he's going to be sitting down for four weeks but he's going to do as much as he can to prepare the boys for the games he'll miss.

"He's going to have to make adjustments. It's the same for everyone involved in the game – unless we adhere to the new rules and sanctions, people are going to be sat down for longer periods of time.

"Whether you agree with the lengths of bans or not, it seems like they're here to stay so we've got to make sure that we try be as good as we possibly can to maximise the time the players spend on the field."

Watts has until the March 28 derby date with Leeds Rhinos to work on his technique after being ruled out of the games against Salford, Warrington Wolves, Huddersfield Giants and Catalans Dragons.

Castleford's attempts to downgrade the grade E charge were dismissed by a tribunal.

"There was no way we could get rid of it altogether because ultimately he did make contact with the ball carrier's head," said Lingard.

"We thought we had a decent case. We thought it was secondary contact from Joe Westerman that moved Tyler Dupree's head into his tackling space. We also thought the height of Tyler Dupree coming into contact was a lot lower than his previous carries.

"But the wording in the points of mitigation states that a player ‘rapidly or unexpectedly loses height’. That obviously wasn’t the case so we couldn't really use that.

"Let me just put a full stop on this now: I'm fully supportive of the way rugby league is moving with this.

"We know there are going to be learning curves and things that we need to adjust to but I think there are also points of reassessment and re-evaluation.

"I certainly think that taking the ball carrier's height into contact into consideration is something we need to do."

Castleford reacted to the sanction imposed on Watts by requesting an urgent meeting with the Rugby Football League.

Lingard has confirmed that was due to take place on Thursday afternoon.

"We’ve got a meeting with (RFL director of operations and legal) Robert Hicks after this press conference as well to go through some of the issues and some of the talking points," said Lingard.

"Rob’s really open with his lines of communication so hopefully we can have that dialogue with him and get a better understanding about where some of the grey areas are and where some of them are from our end specifically."