Lee Radford calls for “common sense” as he wants changes to prevent big games becoming “poor quality”

Castleford’s season has now come to a close, though it wasn’t for the lack of trying.

The Tigers gave it their all at Headingley yesterday as they battled with Leeds for the final play-off spot. They led 8-0 with seven minutes to go but a terrific final few minutes from the Rhinos turned the game on its head keeping their season alive and ending Castleford’s in the process.

It was always going to be tough for the Tigers who had fullback Greg Eden in the halves alongside hooker Paul McShane as youngster Cain Robb played a key role off the bench. Add to that absences like Kenny Edwards and co and it shows just how tough Castleford were doing it yesterday made worse by the fact their thread bare squad has had to manage three games in just over a week’s times and Radford had his say on this believing that it impacts the quality of games which is not the look Super League wants going into the play-offs: “It was just a continuation of having nobody really. I think you’ll probably see the outcome of these games in the next few weeks in the play-offs.

“With the ball there was a lot of errors and I can understand why, we were clunky. Over the next couple of weeks it’ll be interesting what sort of effect it has. Some teams had the ability to freshen up playing some squad members.

“I thought that was a poor quality game, but it was exciting. Warrington last week was one of the worst games I’ve seen but in the end very exciting. It can be a bad game but still exciting and that epitomises that today.”

When speaking about what changes he’d like to see in terms of removing these extra games, Radford called for “common sense” to prevail: “I’m a coach so I’m going to look at it from a coach’s perspective: I want less games, less suspensions, my best players on the field more often.

“You can’t do all of that, you can’t continue to suspend players and play more games. So there’s got to be a bit more common sense if there’s any in the sport.”