At the beginning of the season, in our friendlies, many fans commented on how much fitter and better conditioned opposition players seemed to be compared to us. As this was pre-season, I generally accepted that this would improve.
However, it is glaringly obvious to everyone that the fitness levels of our players are lower than that of other teams in Super League. Firstly, the number of tries we concede in the final ten minutes of the first half and again in the final 20mins of the second half is unbelievable. This is due to poor fitness.
Secondly, the number of penalties we concede and errors we make in the same time periods are as a result of poor fitness. Our penalties are mainly for laying-on late in the tackle-count as we are not fit enough to dominate the tackle and get up in time. Our defence is run ragged as we take longer than other teams to retreat the 10 metres and set the line and are often still retreating when the ball is played, putting us onto the back foot (and costing us penalties for offside).
We have some good players, but they cannot perform to their full ability when unfit. Players who have signed from other clubs, particularly forwards, make less metres, miss more tackles, concede more penalties and make more errors per game than they did at their previous clubs. Likewise, players who leave and move to other clubs improve in these areas. One can only assume that this is a result of the lower fitness levels accepted at our club.
This issue needs dealing with if we are to improve our on-field performances. Our levels of fitness are simply not good enough to win many games at Super League level (or even beat a decent lower-division team come to think of it).

I have seen a copy of the training schedule up at Fitness First.......it's a joke!

This is one area were we have greatly improved this season, and I am sure you could see that if you have seen us play this season.

=#8000FFEvery side is fitter then Cas though, even Championship teams are. Wigan are much improved on last year because Maguire sorted the fitness out like you said, the main examples of that being Feka & Pryce.

i said to my mate that some of your lot where blowing , this was in the first half !

I agree with all that has been said. But what is being done to remedy the situation and when will it be done? The problem has been glaringly obvious for the entire season. Ability is being stifled due to lack of fitness. The team are better than their league position suggests, but they cannot realise their potential under present conditions. Such an obvious shortcoming should not be too difficult to rectify.

Seen and duly noted.

Yep. Your new super-human fitness levels accounted for Wigan throwing away the CC against us because some of your players were too knackered to stop Smithy scoring in the last minute...

Its like a broken record this thread, ALL season we have been losing games because our players are not big enough, not strong enough and not fit enough !!!

What they need is someone in who will be a right ba**ard and make them have it in training so that they crawl to their bed on a night.



I've said it before, this is not a new thing at Cas, go back to 2004 when the rot really set in, lack of fitness and conditioning lost us our position in SL in the first place !!

I completely agree. It's hard to believe that you're carrying pretty much the same squad this season as last. You've been much better disciplined and very consistent. We are neither of these things.

The thing that makes it worse for me is that Wigan had a really tough CC match against Leeds last week and we had the week off yet we were the ones who tired first. Not good enough.

If the same thing happens on Tuesday when we play Catalan, I will be disgusted. On Saturday we have 1 player in the England team, Catalan have 13 in the French sqaud. Now Bosc is injured as well, we should be looking to beat them by 20+. Who wants to bet that they actually outscore us in the last 20 mins.

I'd love to hear what Tuson has to say about fitness training at Cas compared to Wigan.