Despite concedeing nine tries, Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr believes there are some positives he can take from the club’s defeat to Hull KR last night.
The Tigers lost 50-6 to the Robins at Craven Park, with KR winger Tom Davies crossing for a hat-trick and hooker Karl Lawton bagging two from close range.
Krystian Mapapalangi crossed for the club’s only try of the night, pouncing on a grubber into the in-goal in the final play of the game.
The result pushes KR up to third place, whilst it leaves Castleford in 12th, however they still remain just four points away from the play-off spots.
Boss Carr was understandably disappointed with how his side conceded a half-centry of points for the second successive week, but he believes the manner in which those tries came about makes the result a little easier to take this time around.
Offering his verdict post-match, the Tigers boss said:Â “It’s hard to explain to people that aren’t in our room, but I felt like tonight, compared to what I was so disappointed with last week, we actually did physically go after them, which pleased me.
“What let us down was some really fundamental poor errors. Six tries on the fifth tackle shows you that, against a really good opposition who hardly made an error, we went after the defence in terms of we went after our tackling, whereas last week we didn’t do that.
“But six tries on the fifth tackle, it just makes it too hard, because you’ve got through 90% of your set but that urgency on fifth play, and two tries were we caught the ball and then re-dropped it over the line, and they put their hand on it.
“When you look at it from my perspective, I took a lot out of it, but one thing I said to the players is we’re not accepting that. We don’t accept it.
“But, it’s different to how I felt last week, if that can make any sense to anyone.”
Castleford Tigers lose 50-6 to Hull KR in Super League Round 10
Asked what he can change going forward in terms of rectifying those errors, Carr explained that the mistakes made aren’t teachable, a player of Super League standard simply has to do better in those situations.
“They’re indivudual [errors] tonight, like someone getting up to play the ball or someone just catching the ball,” the boss said.
“No one got to dummy half at one stage and then twice we had the ball in our hands and dropped it over the try line.
“It’s not really a skill. I can’t do drills for that, you’ve just got to do it. It’s the 101 of rugby league.”
With his side 34-0 down at half-time, most Castleford sides this season would have given up and let the opposition dominate, but to their credit they stayed in the fight and only conceded three tries, but again it was their basic errors letting them down.
Revealing what was said in the sheds at the break, Carr said: “I asked them to fight in the second half and not just roll over and go out and compete hard and I felt, to be fair to them, they did that.
“One of their tries in the second half, we dropped it over the line and the other one, Mikey Lewis made a really good play, come through on the last and caught his own bomb and then flipped it to the winger and the winger’s putting it down inside the corner post.
“I was disappointed with the first two [Karl Lawton] tries from dummy half. I just felt they were really soft, and I know why and who and how and so do they.
“That’s the worst part, when they come off and the players know they’ve got it wrong in that moment and that’s something we need to improve and we need to fix.”
