“We’ve got plenty of excuses…” – Danny Ward explains defeat to St Helens

Castleford Tigers are fighting with Wakefield Trinity for Super League survival and would like to secure their survival before their final game of the season against Leeds Rhinos.

However, they were unable to take a step towards that this week when they lost to St Helens at the Jungle.

The Tigers were blown away in the first half against the Super League and World Champions St Helens trailing 30-0 after the first half.

This is what new boss Danny Ward branded as “not acceptable” but he did note that the Tigers have “plenty of excuses.”

He said on BBC Radio Leeds: “Very disappointed. Obviously losing at home by 30 points is not acceptable for us as a club, as a team. So, yeah, massively disappointed and the boys are feeling that in the dressing rooms there.

“There’s a lot of areas I was really happy with. Certainly the first half, and I was trying to tell the boys at half-time, you know, it was tough to make them believe because some of the things we’ve been working on in training, especially around defence and detail in the tackle and winning tackles, I thought we were nailing for quite a lot, quite big periods as well, so I was pretty happy.

“I didn’t think the score quite reflected at half-time, but in St Helens you make a couple of errors with a ball and they punish you and that’s what they did tonight, they showed the class and we’re not quite at that level yet, you know that kind of tells us where we are as a team and that’s what we’ve got to strive to be.

“So very disappointed, there were some signs there, certainly with a fight in the second half we asked the boys at half time and we said we’ve got plenty of excuses that we can make, whatever it is, lost a couple of lads, lost people during the week but oh we can just roll the sleeves up and go to work. I thought they did that in the second half, thought they showed a bit. As long as we’ve got that, we’re going to be alright.”