Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr watched his side earn their first Super League win of the season and he’s cast his verdict on the win.
Whilst the round one loss to Wigan was valiant, the round two defeat to Toulouse saw Carr admit that his side had ‘gone backwards’, however, the Tigers easily dispatched a poor Huddersfield by a scoreline of 34-8 on Friday night.
The Giants were, in their own coach’s words, absolutely rubbish but Castleford did impress throughout with their goal-line defence particularly strong as well as their completion rate.
For Carr, it was a big improvement on a poor away trip to France with the Cas coach telling Sky Sports post-match: “I thought it was a really tough performance from our boys.
“We sort of had a tough trip over to Toulouse, and coming to another six-day turnaround back here at home, we wanted to make amends for a disappointing performance for our standards over there, and I thought we did that tonight, which was really pleasing.”
Leading 16-0 going approaching the half, the Tigers didn’t let a Jacob Gagai try disrupt them and they got back to the task in the second forty as they scored a further three tries, including two from half-back Tom Weaver.
Asked about Weaver’s performance, Carr said: “He’s been great, he’s a pleasure to coach, Tom, and that game there tonight will be good for his confidence.
“It’s his team, he’s the half-back, so each week he’s played better and better, and I thought Daejarn (Asi) and he in the halves, both of them played really well tonight.”
Castleford Tigers boss pleased with professional win
Carr also underlined the fact that he’d made it clear to his side that they’d have to kick on in the second half, something they certainly did as they defended strong but also piled the points on.
He admitted: “It was the message at the start of the week, Huddersfield are a team that never goes away, you’ve seen from their game last week against Wakefield where they were sort of down and out, but then put a few late tries on and had an opportunity to win the game.
“We knew we were going to be in for a fight for the full 80 minutes, and that’s something I’m really pleased about, that we come out in the second half and we played the full 40 minutes in the second half too.”
Asked about their goal-line defence, which proved particularly strong over a number of sets when the score was 22-8, Carr said: “In the first three games we defended our try line well, but we’re doing it too often, we’ve just got to make sure that we’re not there as frequently within our games, spending too much time on our own try line, so that’s something to look at.”
Having earned a first Super League win as Castleford Tigers coach, the Australian said: “We’re building something here, we’re a new group of people, a new group of players, so I’m really pleased for the boys, because they’ve been putting in a lot of work from day one of pre-season, and for them to be able to celebrate a good win here at home, in front of our fans who are awesome, and we love them here, I’m really pleased.”
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A first win of the 2026 Season for @CTRLFC 🐯#SuperLeague pic.twitter.com/VveoSVOEuH
— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) February 27, 2026
