Without Lucas Gale Castleford Tigers cannot possibly make the top 5.

6th place would be a great achievement, but even that is unlikely. 7th to 8th is my prediction.

Club rivalry aside, that's an awful injury, and a nasty blow to Cas; real shame for the guy - he's an annoyingly good player.

Agree Bren.

I've seen the headline showing season ending injury but I don't know if this will be a career/SL ending injury? If he misses the full season he'll be almost 32 come the 2021 season and as we've seen so many times before it can take a while for players to return to form

If he fails to bounce straight back, I can really see him dropping leagues/standard or maybe even calling it a day.

Hate to see any RL player struck down with a serious injury tbh no matter the Club, especially before a game has been played.

At one-time a serious Achilles injuries were career finishers but as long as everything goes to plan such as surgery - if needed, then rehab, he should come back OK but obviously, it's a worrying place for a pro-RL player who kicks to get an injury. As you say he's not in his 20's anymore and had a serious injury last season & they generally get harder to keep coming back from as you get older imo.

Can only wish him good luck with the healing process - and those on here who've suffered similar. Sounds horrible.

It's very tough for professional sports people when something like this happens, as it's their future income on the line.

I think it’s more lost opportunities, they should have insurance to cover them. I’d say these days a half back is probably in their prime at 30/31 however to recover from such an injury is tricky.

2021? It's not that bad an injury is it.

Lol my bad that’s me getting confused

I meant 2020

Apparently Cas are looking into special cap dispension from the RFL to sign Gale's replacement.

As unfortunate as his injury is it’d be nonsense for them to get special dispensation to sign a replacement. Just because his injury happened in preseason it shouldn’t be treated differently to a season ending injury that occured in Round 4 or 5. Like I said, whilst unfortunately, injuries happen and are part and parcel of sport.

Previously, players who don’t make a competitive appearance for their club during the season have had dispensation from the cap.
Cas were on the rough end of Shenton’s injury suffered in the first half of the first game of the season in 2016, as a result of an illegal tackle by a Hull KR player. Quite rightly though, the RFL did not allow a dispensation as he appeared for the club, so his whole year’s salary counted on the cap despite him playing only 20 minutes of the season.
Luke Gale’s case is different and should just be a ‘rubber stamp’ from the RFL. He’s not going to play for the club, so with the ‘live’ cap in place his salary won’t be part of the cap and nor should it be.

Would totally agree with this. On the flip side Gale can’t make play end of season if he recovers sooner unless the fall back into line with original cap though.

I thought the cap worked by taking the 20 highest earners from the squad.
Even if Gale doesn't play he'll still be on the payroll so perhaps this is why a dispensation is needed?