Keighley Cougars head coach Barry Eaton has issued a challenge to his players in the build up to Sunday’s Fourth Round Carnegie Challenge Cup tie against engage Super League club Castleford Tigers at CougarPark (Kick off 3.00pm).

Speaking after the club’s 36-28 Co-operative Championship One defeat at Swinton Lions, Eaton said: “The first thing that I want to be sure of is that we’re in the right frame of mind for a big game.

“We gave ourselves too much to do at Swinton and played poorly, particularly in the first half. Against the Tigers we shall have to be at our best for the full 80 minutes if we want to be competitive and not let ourselves down.”

The Cougar players return to training tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. Eaton today (Monday) was going through a ball-by-ball analysis to see what went wrong against Lions and he will be going through that in-depth research with the players at a team meeting.

There will be a medical check for loose forward Greg Nicholson, who took a big impact to his shoulder again at Swinton and had to miss the last ten minutes of the match. Apart from the long term injury victims of Craig Brown (broken hand) and Andy Shickell (cartilage operation) Eaton then expects to select from a full squad.

Eaton added: “Greg’s performance against Swinton was one of the few plus points we could take out of the game and we’ll be running a check on his shoulder mainly as precaution.”

In preparation for the clash of ‘Big Cats’ the Cougar will be training on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Eaton said: “I’ll name a squad of players on Thursday and then the 17 to play against Castleford after training on Friday”.