Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr insists Mikaele Ravalawa has his full support following his error in the clash with Leeds Rhinos last weekend.
In a clip that has gone viral, Ravalawa failed to compete to collect a high kick and ultimately ended up costing his side a try in the first half at Headingley last weekend. The Fiji international has come in for plenty of criticism since that moment, despite managing to get himself over the line to score Castleford’s only try of the game.
It’s fair to say Ravalawa won’t have been happy with his actions and he might not be completely pleased with the impact he has made in black and amber so far, scoring just two tries in his first five games for the club.
Carr isn’t too concerned about the mistake, though, putting that down to a moment of madness while also pointing to the positives he has seen from the powerful wide man, who joined the club from St George Illawarra Dragons in the off-season.
“He knows he got that moment wrong,” Carr said during his press conference on Friday afternoon. “People and players get things wrong at times, it is what it is.
“We have to move on, we’ll move past it and I’ve got a load of confidence he’ll get it done next time he’s in that same opportunity. We can’t dwell on things like that – people make mistakes and things go wrong, we’ve got to make sure they don’t recur.
“Catching kicks is really hard, everyone has an opinion but sitting there underneath a high ball when there’s four people running at you trying to get the ball as well, it’s part of the game. I wouldn’t say it’s an issue, it’s just something that has position has to be able to deal with.”
The Castleford Tigers boss added: “What we think about him and what he thinks about himself is the most important thing. We know who he is.
“He ran for over 200 metres against Leeds, scored a try and made a line-break straight through the middle. People want to talk about one moment, well what about the other positive things he did in that game for us?
“He competed extremely hard, I thought. He ran for more metres than anyone else in our team in that game. He is doing a lot right, we have got to make sure we keep focusing on what he is doing well and we know the player we’ve got. That’s all that matters.”
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