Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr revealed his pride after seeing his side respond to last week’s humiliation by beating Bradford Bulls on Thursday night.
The Tigers were thumped 72-6 last Saturday by Warrington Wolves on what was an afternoon to forget to say the very least for everyone associated with the club. However, the West Yorkshire outfit bounced back and then some against a Bradford side that had won three of their last four Super League games, beating them 40-28.
Jason Qareqare scored a first half hat-trick to get the ball rolling for the Tigers, with Darnell McIntosh touching down twice and George Lawler and Tom Weaver also getting over on the night at Wheldon Road.
It wasn’t a complete performance, but it was one Castleford certainly needed and Carr was relieved, delighted and proud to see his side get over the line and secure the two points.
“It’s been a big week for us as a group and as a club,” Carr told Sky Sports. “I had a good mate of mine Richard Agar send me a text this week saying ‘the comeback is always greater than the setback’ and it couldn’t have been more true.
“We needed a response after what was a bad day last week and they happen, but one day doesn’t define you, it’s what you do after that. I’m really proud of the team.
“It was something I’ve never been faced with. I’ve never been put in a situation where you have to try and manage a group of players out of that. This is a group of people who care a lot, they care about this club and this team. People don’t mean to play poorly on certain days, you don’t go out there with that attitude, it just happens at times. We’ll take a huge learning from it but yeah, a big day for us.”
He added: “How we played tonight is how we want to play our rugby, we’ve done it in glimpses but we’re still learning as a group and what works for us and what doesn’t work for us. I thought our middle set a huge platform for us, they ran really hard and they were hard to tackle.
“We lost Semi Valemei there and we can’t take that for granted. That was a bit of adversity and we could have gone into the habit of what we did last week but we learnt from that, which I’m really proud of.”
Wigan Warriors loanee Tom Forber played the full game on his debut for the Tigers and Carr took the opportunity to pile praise on the youngster’s ability to adapt and perform.
“He played the 80 minutes for us. Super tough, super competitive, tackled everything that moved,” he said.
“I met him yesterday. Put that into perspective, our starting hooker, I met him yesterday morning and we went through the play calls and game plan and for him to put a performance like that in for us is super impressive and it shows what type of character he’s got.”
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