Dwain Chambers, the disgraced British sprinter, is to make a dramatic career switch to rugby league. Castleford Tigers, the bottom club in the engage Super League, are set to announce his signing on Monday.

Chambers, who this month finished second in the 60 metres at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia and served a two-year ban that ended in 2005 after testing positive for the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), had a brief dalliance with American football, but the move to rugby league has come as a bolt from the blue. It seems likely to mark the end of his athletics career and signal that he will not, after all, be contesting his life ban from the British Olympic Association in the courts.

The signing of Chambers, 30 next week, would coincide with Castleford’s submission to the Rugby Football League of their application for a three-year Super League licence from 2009. The club have called a press conference for Monday but initially refused to comment on the story after agreeing a deal for its publication in a Sunday newspaper.

Chambers has been frozen out by athletics promoters throughout Europe and, having had to pay back an estimated £120,000 in prize- money, has been rendered almost penniless. He has been forced to look elsewhere to make a living and rugby league has stepped in with an extraordinary offer by Castleford, who have won only one of eight matches this season and are two points adrift at the bottom of the table.

In March last year Chambers — who had tried out with the San Francisco 49ers American football team in 2004 — signed a deal with the Hamburg Sea Devils, the NFL Europa team, but did not play for the club, who subsequently folded. He has no experience of rugby in either code, but this has not prevented Castleford from stepping in for an athlete who has been shunned by some of his colleagues since his drugs suspension.

Chambers would almost certainly be played on the wing, where his speed could be devastating, although there are bound to be questions asked of someone who has never made a tackle in his life.

Damion Silk, Chambers’s spokesman, confirmed last night that the athlete will be going to Castleford to have a look at the club and to discuss the possibility of a rugby league career. However, Silk maintained that it was merely a visit and did not mean that Chambers would be committing himself to the club. Castleford insisted that it was not a publicity stunt and that they would be looking at Chambers on a trial basis.

Chambers would become the highest-profile sprinter to turn to rugby league since Berwyn Jones, the British 100 yards record-holder, joined Wakefield Trinity in 1964. Jones was selected on the 1966 Great Britain tour to Australia.