Castleford Tigers 35-20 Warrington Wolves: Player ratings and major talking points

To the surprise of many, Castleford joined St Helens in the Challenge Cup Final thanks to victory over Warrington. The Tigers attacked masterfully and fired themselves to a 15-point win and a place at Wembley. Can they now send Daryl Powell out on a high?

Major Talking Points:

1. Tigers attacking masterclass

As soon as he arrived at the Jungle, Powell introduced exhilarating attacking rugby to the Castleford faithful. It became part of their DNA and took them to the top of the league in 2017 when it was at its peak. But today was as good as I’ve ever seen the Tigers attack. Against Super League’s best try scorers, their attack made Warrington look ordinary. Their set plays were mesmeric and continually opened up the Warrington defence. Their spine were simply outstanding.

2. Inconsistent Warrington

Over the last few seasons Warrington have boasted one of the best squads in the league. Despite that, they appear to struggle for the consistency their rivals produce again and again. In recent weeks, the Wolves have looked like the competition’s best team but it all went wrong today. If they want to make an impression in the league they’ll need to remove this inconsistency from their game.

3. Tale of two sin bins

The game was summed up by two sin bins. In the first half Warrington went down to 12 men and the Tigers punished them with tries that took the game well away from the Wire. Meanwhile, when Castleford lost Jacques O’Neill to the sin bin the Tigers gave as good as they got scoring some more key tries to keep themselves in control. It was these responses to yellow cards that perhaps proved the difference.

Player ratings:

Castleford Tigers
1 Niall Evalds – 8
2 Derrell Olpherts – 6
3 Peter Mata’utia – 8
4 Michael Shenton – 7
25 Jordan Turner – 9
6 Jake Trueman – 8
31 Gareth O’Brien – 8
14 Nathan Massey – 7
9 Paul McShane – 9
24 Suaia Matagi – 8
11 Oliver Holmes – 8
21 Jesse Sene-Lefao – 7
13 Adam Milner – 7
Substitutes
8 Liam Watts – 7
17 Alex Foster – 6
18 Jacques O’Neill – 6
20 James Clare – N/A

Warrington Wolves
1 Stefan Ratchford – 7
2 Tom Lineham – 6
18 Jake Mamo – 7
4 Toby King – 7
5 Josh Charnley – 6
6 Blake Austin – 6
7 Gareth Widdop – 7
8 Chris Hill – 6
9 Daryl Clark – 6
10 Mike Cooper – 6
11 Ben Currie – 6
12 Jack Hughes – 6
15 Matt Davies – 6
Substitutes
13 Joe Philbin – 6
16 Danny Walker – 6
19 Rob Mulhern – 6
20 Sitaleki Akauola – 6