By Martin Morgan

Last updated 12:22, Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Workington Town are the latest victims of Super League’s unprecedented injury crisis.

Coach: Dave Rotheram

Earlier this month an astonishing 65 players were unavailable for top-flight action due to injury, up from 48 at the same time last year.

This meant almost a quarter of all players were sidelined – and it’s having a knock-on effect at the lower level.

Town boss Dave Rotheram has been working hard behind the scenes to bolster his NL2 squad with loan deals for Super League or NL1 talent, to no avail.

“The team we have is the team we can afford, at the moment,” he said.

“Twenty five per cent of Super League players are out injured, so no players are filtering down to divisions one and two,” he said.

“They are quite scarce at the moment, and even if you find loan players that are available, you are hiring the player, so there’s a substantial cost involved.

“People think you get loan players for free but that’s not the case. We keep working and it took a lot of my time last week looking for new players.”

Wakefield were worst hit of the top-flight clubs with nine missing, while Hull and Warrington each had eight out.