Castleford Tigers head coach Danny McGuire has admitted he is worried about facing Leeds Rhinos on Sunday based on his team’s ‘soft’ performance against St Helens.
St Helens faced a Salford reserve team in Round One and it wasn’t much tougher for them in Round Two as they steamrolled Castleford Tigers in a 46-6 win.
Saints made almost twice as many metres as their hosts with the Red Vee racking up 1758 compared to just 901 for Castleford, with Saints’ 840 post-contact metres almost as many as the Tigers made all game.
Speaking to the media after the game, Danny McGuire was asked about positives including a strong period in the first half but he refuted that and labelled his side as “soft”.
“I thought we had a period of probably five to ten minutes where we were okay. The rest of it we were soft,” McGuire said.
“I like your positivity and that you’re trying to find positives but I can’t really see that many to be fair.”
Castleford Tigers boss makes ‘worried’ admission ahead of Leeds Rhinos clash
Credit: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
Among the St Helens players to shine were Alex Walmsley and Jack Welsby who made 198 and 244 metres each and McGuire’s assessment referenced the physical punch of St Helens, which in turn allowed for those like Welsby to do their thing.
The Castleford Tigers boss said: “I thought Saints were very good physically, they were too big and too strong for us really and then their key players came in on the back of it.
“I think if you’d have said let’s play for three hours then I think they would have kept on playing because they were having that much fun, which is worrying.”
Having pushed Hull KR to golden point, it’s a major step back for the Tigers, who McGuire admitted needed to be performing at a high level to compete with St Helens, such is the disparity of their squads.
He admitted: “We’ve gone backwards again and our challenge is to find some consistency again. I just feel that when it gets tough and starts to bite, we’re not able to do our job properly.
“Some players aren’t where we’d like them to be and we’ll keep coaching and educating them and then some players just weren’t good enough tonight. We, as a team, one through 17 need to be at 8 or 9 out of 10 to compete with Saints.”
Next up for Castleford is a West Yorkshire derby against Leeds Rhinos with McGuire set to return to his former club as a head coach for the first time. Asked if that is the sort of game the players can get up for and respond, the Tigers coach highlighted his worry at the fact they had not been up for the first home game of the season anyway.
McGuire argued: “I felt there should have been energy and passion and desire today with it being our first home game and a good crowd but we didn’t get that, so I’m worried that if we haven’t got it in this situation then can we find it next week?
“I hope we can, I can’t see why we wouldn’t but today has worried me a little bit.”
