After today’s defeat to St Helens live on Channel 4, it was suggested by Adam Hills on Channel 4 that the Castleford Tigers fans were surprisingly quiet.
He said of the Cas fans as they lost at home to a jet lagged St Helens team after becoming the Champions of the World last week.
Hills said: “We said this is an intimidating place to come before the game but the Cas fans were a little bit quiet today and that is unheard of.”
Former Leeds Rhinos women’s player Danika Priim gave her analysis of why the Tigers fans were frustrated:
“I think the expectation is from the World Club Challenge that teams don’t perform as well but this is St Helens and we shouldn’t write them off.
“There were the missed chances which creates frustration. Cas should have been 20 points up at halftime which creates some frustration as a fan.”
Today was indeed a frustrating defeat for the Tigers to take as they had a great chance to defeat the World Champions St Helens who were suffering from some jet lag.
They looked like having a good chance of winning the game but squandered at least five opportunities with brilliant breaks from Jake Mamo, Jack Broadbent and Bureta Faraimo.
After the game, Radford told Channel 4 that this was why they lost to Saints.
“Yeah execution let us down,” he said, “We can take comfort in the opportunities we made but executing didn’t happen today.
“What we need to show growth in is staying in the arm wrestle. They are the masters of that and that is for everyone else to catch up.
“The shifts we had spoken about in the week was to get better territory and we backed ourselves to score but that worked against us.”
When asked about Bureta Faraimo’s no try which came after he intercepted and darted to the Saints try line but grounded the ball as he put his elbow into touch, Radford was left speechless, saying: “Yeah I haven’t got any words for that.”
He was happy with the intensity in his side’s defence: “We wanted a bit more intensity in defence today and I think we got that.”