Castleford Tigers Director of Rugby, Chris Chester, has ripped into his team’s “pathetic” performance against Leeds Rhinos, saying there is “no excuse” for the display they put out.
The Tigers’ lost 64-6 to their local rivals as try doubles from Ash Handley, Brodie Croft and Ryan Hall helped Leeds to their second biggest ever win over Chester’s men.
Leeds raced into a 36-0 half time lead on Saturday afternoon, and scored five further tries before a consolation from Jenson Windley saved the home side from being nilled.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Chester was furious with his side’s effort, and slammed the performance, going as far as saying some players may exit the club on today’s efforts.
“It certainly was [a hard watch],” he said to Sky commentators Frasier Dainton and Barrie McDermott. “I’m here fronting up to you guys, I just wish some of our guys had fronted up today physically. It’s just pathetic really, some of the efforts.”
“I could tell after two minutes we weren’t at the races and I need to have a look at what I’ve done during the week, but yeah, just really disappointed. I’m really peeved off with the effort and I can cop getting beat but I can’t cop getting beat on effort and our effort was very, very poor tonight.”
“Maybe I need to show some more leadership and make some tougher decisions on some individuals that maybe are contracted to this club for next year, but may not be after this performance.”
Dainton commented that this was a unlike a normal Castleford Tigers performance, in which Chester heavily disagreed.
“Well it has been a Castleford performance, hasn’t it for the last three or four years. I’m really disappointed with some individuals and we want some leadership straight from the off. We’ve got some senior guys that needed to show a bit of leadership, we didn’t get that.”
“It’s got to mean something. It’s got to hurt and it frustrates the hell out of me performances like that. We had a decent performance last week and then we back it up with such an inept performance, both individually and collectively and I can’t stomach that.
Castleford Tigers head coach update as Chris Chester confirms timeline
Chester commented on the progress of the new head coach, and said that an announcement should be made this coming week, with the potential to be as early as Monday. He also confirmed that it would not be an immediate start, and that the incoming boss would take over at the start of pre-season.
“We’ve put an offer to a particular coach, he’s our preferred candidate. We’ll discuss over the weekend and then hopefully come Monday, Tuesday we might have an agreement in place.”
“Unfortunately for me it’s going to be the start of pre-season. That can’t come soon enough for me because we’ve got some real serious, hard work to do between now and then. Like I said, there’s going to be some players shipped out, there’s going to be a new crop of players that I’m really excited to be working with and I know the coach is excited about working with them too.”
Dominant performance from @leedsrhinos in Round 22! 🦏#SuperLeague pic.twitter.com/UFdlMR4is0
— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) August 16, 2025
