Castleford Tigers

Torrid Tigers, video referee woes, Super League’s most underrated player, and other Castleford Tigers v Huddersfield Giants talking points

by
Sam Cook
July 3, 2025

Castleford Tigers hosted Huddersfield Giants in the first game of Round 17 of Super League and we’ve picked out the key talking points.

It was Huddersfield who came through in a match that was lacking in quality with Luke Robinson’s side winning 30-12, condemning Castleford Tigers to a seventh home loss in 2025.

Both teams pushed Wigan Warriors very close in recent weeks suggesting this was set to be a close one with both teams improving despite their lowly league position, however, it marked the biggest win of the season for the Giants.

George Hill was named as the man to replace the suspended Liam Horne whilst the visitors welcomed back key men Adam Swift and Oliver Wilson.

The result means the Giants move to within two points of the Tigers after recording their third win of the season. Here are some of the key talking points from tonight’s match.

Castleford Tigers v Huddersfield Giants talking points

Torrid Tigers

Whilst the game was competitive at times, it certainly can’t be called high-quality. The reason the game was competitive is that both of these sides were poor for large parts of the games with the match characterised by errors and a lack of cutting edge or intensity. Castleford particularly, barring three minutes at end of the first half, were torrid.

The moments of class that broke the game open were few and far between and often a result of a poor defensive read instead of brilliant attacking play with Tui Lolohea’s opening try an example of that. Castleford’s kick chase allowed George Flanagan to expose them and set off Jacob Gagai on the wing, rather than the full-back having to dance through and make the magic happen.

It shouldn’t be a surprise given where these sides sit in the table but having shown improved performances of late, primarily against Wigan for each team, more was expected. Instead, they played down to the level of one another with one team performing a lot worse than the other.

Cas can’t capitalise on early sin bin

Joe Westerman is a man renowned for toughness, a prime example being the fact he pushed his dislocated knee back into place and resumed playing only a few years ago, but he went down inside the first minute and was writhing in agony.

It was unclear initially what had caused the veteran to be in such pain but the replays showed a very late shot from Huddersfield hooker Zac Woolford, something that the Australian was sent to the sin bin for after just 43 seconds.

On a hot night and after such a short turnaround as the Giants had, having played in France on Saturday evening, playing a man down for the opening ten looked likely to be a killer but Huddersfield managed to upset the odds and grit out a win.

Super League’s most underrated player

Lots of players get touted as Super League’s most underrated player but a more accurate description might be under appreciated. Zac Cini is one of those players. There’s no doubt that Castleford fans will appreciate him but the fact he isn’t being talked about more across Super League is a surprise.

Signed from the second tier in Australia, the centre struggled early on but has been superb once he got some games under his belt. He’s recently been filling in at full-back in the absence of Tex Hoy and it’s fair to say he’s not looked out of place one bit. Brilliant under the high ball, a strong kick returner and creative in attack as well, Cini is the sort of player that other Super League clubs will be hoping to uncover if the number of quota spots increase to ten.

One to watch

George Flanagan is a seriously talented player. The young Huddersfield full-back signed from Bradford with big expectations and he is starting to live up to them.

Given a chance as a result of injuries, Flanagan is taking it with both hands and is certainly among the most exciting young playmakers in Super League. He’s still inconsistent but that’s to be expected and his performances have seen him cement that full-back and force NRL signing Jacob Gagai out onto the wing.

Video referee speed… again

Once again, the video referee process was unreasonably slow on decisions that were obvious. James Vella didn’t go to the video referee too much in the first half but he became more reliant upon it and Tom Grant seemed to get slower each time around.

Taane Milne’s no try review took well over a minute despite it being incredibly apparent that the former South Sydney Rabbitohs man had knocked on in goal. The decision minutes earlier to review a possible penalty try also took a considerable amount of time. The decision to continuously review Sam Wood’s no try is another where the less said the better.

All in all that saw the match take close to two hours to complete which is just far too long for what was a relatively incident-free game anyway.

Teams

Castleford Tigers XIII: Zac Cini; Josh Simm, Louis Senior, Sam Wood, Innes Senior; Daejarn Asi, Chris Atkin; Brad Singleton, George Hill, Tom Amone; George Lawler, Alex Mellor, Joe Westerman

Interchanges: Rowan Milnes, George Griffin, Sam Hall, Joe Stimson

Huddersfield Giants XIII: George Flanagan; Jacob Gagai, Taane Milne, Sam Halsall, Adam Swift; Tui Lolohea, Matt Frawley; Oliver Wilson, Zac Woolford, Tristan Powell; Harry Rushton, Joe Greenwood, Leroy Cudjoe

Interchanges: Ashton Golding, George King, Tom Burgess, Kieran Rush