“Frustrated because…” – Castleford Tigers boss speaks out after Leeds defeat

In 2023, Castleford Tigers ended their winless run to start the season to give new Head Coach Andy Last a first win in charge of the West Yorkshire outfit by notching a shock win over Leeds Rhinos. So, the question was would the Tigers repeat the feat and defeat the Rhinos to end their run of six defeats to start the season and give Craig Lingard his first win as their coach?

It was a perfect fixture to kick start Rivals Round over Easter as the Tigers took on their big city rivals Leeds Rhinos in the rain which was turning the Jungle into more of a swamp.

Early in the game the Tigers had a chance to take the lead when they had a shot at goal with a 40 metre penalty effort from Danny Richardson. He struck the post h0wever.

In one of the stranger moments of the season, Liam Watts came up with an intercept and from that Liam Horne had a chance off an offload but Leeds denied him with scrambling defence.

The Tigers kept having sets on the Leeds lines thanks to goal line dropouts as well as Leeds errors. Leeds defended well as did the Tigers when Leeds had a late effort in the half. Defence was on top and the halftime score was 0-0.

Having been under the pump in the first half, Leeds scored the first try in the second half before the Tigers got on the board. In fact, they scored twice inside the first 12 minutes of the second 40 with Paul Momirovski scoring both. His first was a dubious grounding from a Brodie Croft kick before he supported a lovely James McDonnell break to score.

Soon Leeds would lead 20-0. Rhyse martin would notch a penalty before Lachie Miller scored his first Leeds try after a Matt Frawley kick was batted by Ash Handley.

Josh Simm got a consolation try for the Tigers after a kick took a wicked bounce. Leeds got the last say when Lachie Miller supported a brilliant Brodie Croft break.

Castleford Tigers boss “frustrated”

Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard spoke after the game about being “frustrated” with the second half display after such a positive first half display from his side.

He said on BBC West Yorkshire Sport: “Frustration. The way we played that first half we thought we were really good but we lacked a little bit of quality and cutting edge. Take your hat off to Leeds, they defended their goal line really well. But I felt we should have done better with the territory and possession that we had and we lacked that cutting edge and quality.

“I don’t think they would have caved but I think it would have given us a lift and an opportunity to try and score again and see where that would have taken us. We camped down for quite a few sets. I think we only made one error and the end of our sets were really good. We had more repeat sets than we have had all season there but there is a bit frustration that we weren’t able to have that cutting edge.

“We have to be better especially the way we started the second half. We were frustrated because their tries came from kicks and plays back against the grain which we were expecting and we clocked off.”