Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard to experiment and test squad depth in London Broncos friendly

A strong Tigers outfit brushed Keighley Cougars aside in a 54-0 victory to make a confident start to the Lingard era.

Lingard plans to give opportunities to the players that missed out at Cougar Park when Super League rivals London visit Wheldon Road.

"Samy Kibula, George Hill, Cain Robb and Brad Martin will play," said Lingard, who will be without experienced back-rower Alex Mellor for eight weeks due to a knee injury.

"We're hoping Sam Wood is going to be fit and Danny Richardson is going to be able to play some part as well.

"It won't be the same squad so there will be a little bit more upheaval in the rotations.

"It's important to have a look at people in different positions and a few people picked up knocks that we don't want to risk if we don't need to.

"We're not expecting to hit the ground running like we did last weekend."

Castleford were close to full strength for the trial game against Keighley with Luke Hooley and Josh Simm among the new faces in a revamped backline and co-captains Paul McShane and Joe Westerman leading an experienced pack.

Lingard will explore his options beyond his first-choice picks in the second of three friendlies.

"We'll probably try Liam Horne as a middle in the 13 role because we'll have Cain Robb coming in at nine," added Lingard, whose side round off their preparations against Huddersfield Giants on February 4. "We might try to utilise him there this season.

"We're hoping that Elie El-Zakhem can come in so we can look at him in the back row.

"We'll give Nixon Putt and a few other people a few more minutes. We might have a look at Josh Simm at centre with Jason Qareqare starting on that wing.

"Fletcher Rooney will come into the squad as well and play some part in the game because we don't want to run Luke Hooley into the ground before the season has kicked off.

"There will be quite a lot of chopping and changing so I expect it'll be a bit more of a disjointed performance than last weekend."

Castleford ran in 10 tries at Cougar Park and kept their League 1 hosts scoreless after former favourite Jake Webster was denied a last-gasp try in his farewell game.

Tougher challenges lie ahead for the new-look Tigers but Lingard viewed the performance as a step in the right direction following last year’s relegation scare.

"What we needed as a group and a club was a little bit of confidence after last season and I think we got that," he said.

"Defensively, we got put under a bit of pressure at times on our own goal line and it was nice to see we had that bit of resilience that we've talked about all through pre-season. We want to be durable and desperate to defend our own goal line.

"There are certain aspects where we need to get better. We can be a bit more aggressive on our own goal line and also defending the opposition coming out of their 20 area. But to concede zero points is always pleasing.

"Attack-wise, it was nice to score some points. We started to build some of those connections that we've been talking about.

"Improvement-wise, some of our timings were a little bit off and the execution of some of our plays as well.

"In pre-season friendlies, you want to be happy with the majority of stuff but have some areas to improve. I think we got that pretty much right on Sunday."