He feared his career could be over when his shoulder crumpled yet again but Gareth Widdop is now ready to fire Castleford to success.
The ex- England stand-off is looking forward to the new campaign more than most given how his 2022 season ended. Widdop suffered an agonising dislocated shoulder scoring for Warrington at Magic Weekend in July. He’d endured plenty of issues with the same right shoulder before, dislocating it three times in just eight months with NRL side St George Illawarra.
The latest ended ‘marquee’ signing Widdop’s three-year Warrington stint as he never played for them again and he did wonder if it might even signal the end of a decorated career. He recalled: “I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve not had many injuries until I did my shoulder in 2018 and 2019. So I can’t complain. And it’d been good for a couple of years.
"But when I did it again last season, when you’re at the height of your emotion and sat in the sheds afterwards, you do fear the worst especially when you know you’ve done it a couple of times before. I was worried. And it was a disappointing end. But I got good news about it.
"I’ve had some time off before joining up with Cas and got away for a bit. I’ve been back in full training for two weeks now and it’s one of those I’ll just keep monitoring. I’m still doing a lot of rehab to make sure it’s OK but it could have been a lot worse.”
Widdop will be good to go when Castleford kick-off their new Super League season at Hull on February 19. Tigers just missed out on the play-offs last term in Lee Radford’s first season in charge. But they hope a new half-back partnership of ex-Melbourne Storm star Widdop and Wakefield captain Jacob Miller will take them to new levels in 2023.
Widdop was left trophyless at big-spending Wolves who endured a dismal season under former Castleford coach Daryl Powell. He admitted: “You play to win things and play in the big games. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that but I’ve an opportunity now to hopefully do that with Cas and help them with my experience. That’s the goal - to get us in those finals.
“Milky (Miller) is a great fella and a great player. It’s early stages but we’re having a lot of discussions and the more we can train and play together, the better we’ll be. He’s really well experienced, too.”
And Widdop, who emigrated with his family from Halifax to Australia aged 12, is finally playing for a club in his native Yorkshire. He conceded: “I’m not getting as much stick from the family as I did, which is nice. There’s a lot of people from Halifax who are Cas fans, it’s good to be closer to home and Cas is a really good rugby league town. There’s real support around this place.”
