Powell criticises “strange decisions” from “average” referee

Daryl Powell couldn’t have been prouder of his side after they went down 16-6 to top-of-the-table Catalans Dragons.

However, the Castleford boss was left frustrated with a number of decisions made by referee Chris Kendall, particularly for two of the Dragons’ tries.

“Samisoni Langi’s wasn’t a try, and then the one in the corner, Mathieu Laguerre, he put his foot in touch,” Powell said.

“There were strange decisions tonight and it wasn’t a good look from a game perspective – there’ll be some questions asked about that.

“It was poor and I don’t like set restarts anyway, they are a blight on the game at the moment – you’ve got hooters going off all over the place.

“It’s not a good look, sound or feel for the sport, but I’m not going to say anything else, he (Chris Kendall) was average tonight.”

Despite those frustrations, Powell was happy with what his side dished up considering the lack of personnel.

“I was pretty proud of the boys; we’ve got Wattsy (Liam Watts) at halfback so you can see what our team looks like at the moment.

“It’s pretty frustrating from an attacking point of view, as we couldn’t quite put our attacks together.

“We had held them really well, physicality wise we were awesome so I was really pleased with that.

“We’ve got 11 or 12 players out for different reasons but we’ve got to hang in there.

“We will take a lot out of tonight’s game from a defensive point of view and learn some lessons.

“We’ve got to move on to St Helens next week and then hopefully we will get some players back and get some more consistency.”