Danny McGuire sees Castleford Tigers positives despite ‘criminal’ admission

Danny McGuire takes positives from the progression Castleford Tigers showcased during Saturday’s afternoon’s defeat to Hull FC. The Tigers lost the game 16-10 at Wheldon Road, but they led for much of the first half after turning in what was a much-improved showing following last week’s heavy defeat to Wakefield Trinity.

Castleford were thumped 32-8 by their newly promoted neighbours at Belle Vue on January 24 and it’s fair to say Saturday’s contest, which doubled up as Joe Westerman’s testimonial, was a lot more encouraging. Josh Simm and Innes Senior touched down in the corners to give McGuire’s side the lead at the break, but close range efforts early in the second half from Jed Cartwright and Amir Bourouh proved their undoing on home soil.

It means that Castleford approach next week’s Challenge Cup clash with Bradford Bulls on the back of successive friendly defeats, which isn’t ideal of course. However, McGuire saw improvement against Hull and he’s confident his side are on a positive trajectory.

“It’s hard because when you play this game you want to win,” McGuire said. “You want to be successful and your ultimate aim is to win the game.

“I know it only a testimonial but we were disappointed we didn’t get the result. There is some improvement there and things that we can say, ‘look we’re good in this area but we need to fix up other areas’. There’s some signs there.

“We’ve got a lot of things that we’re tidying up and like every team you’re aiming for perfection and we’re a little bit away from that at the minute but we’ll keep working hard. I’ve just said to the players that we’ll get back in on Monday and iron out some problems and talk about some of the things we did really well and prepare as well as we can for the game next weekend.

“There’s some things we’re happy with and somethings we need to get better.”

🗣️ “I’d like to personally thank everyone for coming out today, the Cas and Hull fans have really made today special.”#COYF pic.twitter.com/Z2IUL07J0V

— Castleford Tigers (@CTRLFC) February 1, 2025

On the game itself, McGuire added: “I thought it was a game of two halves, we were strong in the first half and did some really really good things that we’d been working on.

“Defensively we were physical and we matched them up, Hull have got a big pack and physically we were pretty good. We did some nice things with the ball and created opportunities so first half team talk was pleasing. I just thought we lacked a little bit of discipline, a couple of penalties.

“The second half I thought we started poor, offside from a kick and then we couldn’t defend our line twice, two really really soft tries, criminal really. A barge over and one pass off the ruck. That was disappointing.

“There’s improvement from what we dished up last week. I thought Hull were good and they look a lot better than they were last season, a bit more experience and I thought the young players were strong. I’ve got to give them credit but we’re disappointed with probably our last 30 minutes of that game. We need to learn, get better and work harder.”

Castleford Tigers travel to Bradford Bulls on Sunday, February 9, before kicking off their Super League campaign a few days later at Hull KR.