Castleford Tigers v Salford Red Devils: Niall Evalds calls for Cas to rediscover their Magic

On the back of Monday’s unrecognisable 22-0 home loss against Wigan Warriors, they are in urgent need of quickly returning to winning ways when they open the event in Newcastle against Salford Red Devils.

Castleford had won their previous four games but realise another miserable display like that will leave their top-six play-off hopes hanging by a thread.

Full-back Niall Evalds, who has been such a catalyst for much of their attacking brio this term since joining from Salford, admitted: “We were way off.

“The performance just wasn’t good enough. We’ve watched bits of it and that’s not a Cas performance

“We’d been on a good run of form so it was disappointing to toss that one up.

“But there’s no better place than the Magic Weekend to turn things around.

“We’re looking for a good performance.”

Evalds is confident Castleford, who beat Salford in the Challenge Cup quarter-final on their way to Wembley, have only suffered a blip and can quickly regain their cutting edge.

“We are always confident whoever we play,” he added.

“We know when we are on our game, take care of all the little one percenters and all the hard-working details we can beat anyone on our day.

“We need to really rip in.”

Much will depend on whether England hooker Paul McShane, the Man of Steel who missed that Wigan defeat with an abdominal injury, passes his fitness test ahead of this afternoon’s game. He sets the tempo and standard for so much of Tigers’ best work.

Salford have struggled this term and are the only team to lose to bottom-placed Leigh Centurions but they showed their potential by vanquishing Hull FC 42-14 on Monday.

Evalds, who scored 101 tries in 146 games for the Red Devils, said: “They are a quality side and have some really good players.

“That performance they have just put in against Hull shows what they can do when they are on and we won’t be under-estimating anyone.

“We’re ready for the best Salford.

“But we know how huge this game is for the top six.

“There’s three games left now and a win this week would keep us on track and in that race.

“It is really tight but we have to take care of ourselves.”