CASTLEFORD TIGERS secured a 30-22 victory over Hull FC at The Jungle tonight.
The Tigers raced into a 30-10 lead before the Black and Whites rallied to threaten a comeback at 30-22, but the Tigers held on for a priceless two points.
Castleford boss Craig Lingard had this to say following the game: “It was pleasing but I’ve sat here when we’ve lost and I’ve sulked and moaned so let’s enjoy a win.
“We need to make sure we don’t get carried away. I think after the second-half performance against St Helens, where we were pretty abysmal, to come back and win a game was pleasing.
“We are not a finished article and we will have good and bad periods in the game but my nerves were stretched in the last 15 minutes.
“When a team is down like they were, they could either put the cue on the rack and you can score more tries or they can come out fighting and they did that.
“That’s a positive for them and that’s a change of mentality for them. We were getting caught, they were moving us from side to side and we got caught in the middle by not shutting the gates as much as we should have.
“It wasn’t pretty but the positives we take from that is we saw the game out. We could have quite easily have lost the game it would have been a catastrophe.”
Lingard has revealed what the message was given to Castleford players before the game.
“The message today was to be boring. We didn’t need to overcomplicate the game. Paul McShane was in the halves and with a new partnership it can be clunky so you’ve got to make sure your halfback partnership has a goal and plan.
“Today, the message was to compete high. We needed to get 50 percent of the ball which we did and we completed 80 or 90 per cent. We wanted to defend tough and in the first-half we did that.
“We gifted two tries to Hull so it was disappointing to go in at half-time only eight points up because I thought we managed the game really well.
“Just after half-time, where we have been sloppy, we maintained our intensity and then we had the period where we were scrambling.”
Lingard held out special praise for Sylvester Namo, who returned from a five-match ban to cause carnage in the Hull defence.
“Sylvester was good and that’s what we are looking for. We are not expecting him to do 25 minutes stints. He came over on rehab from an ACL and he has had five games out with suspension.
“We wanted to give him a blowout at the end of the first-half and early in the second-half but it seemed a pointless interchange bringing him on before half-time because we had just scored.
“I thought the two stints he had was impactful.”
Lingard also put Josh Hodson on the bench, but he was an unused substitute as the Castleford boss explains why.
“Josh Hodson was on there just in case. We left Cain Robb out too and he was disappointed because he has played pretty well but Jason Qareqare has just come back in from 12 weeks out and has played just one reserve game.
“I felt we needed an outside back on the bench, Tex Hoy and Innes Senior failed HIAs against St Helens so we needed the interchange there.
“Unfortunately for Cain, it meant he dropped out and he can be disappointed. It turns out we didn’t need that substitute today but had Jason had issues we would have needed an outside back.”
The Tigers head coach revealed that diarrhoea and sickness has also taken over the camp, with Liam Horne almost having to take a toilet break during the game.
“Liam did 80 minutes about there and there are four or five guys out there that have been suffering with diarrhoea and sickness.
“Four were struggling out there which impacted our fatigue and Horney was one of them. He said that if we had scored again after Corey Hall’s try then he would have had to go to the toilet which would have been messy for Sky TV!
“It developed during the day and got worse during the game. Rowan Milnes was another.”
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