LEE RADFORD has spoken on Castleford Tigers’ defeat against St Helens in today’s game at the Jungle.
The Tigers went down 24-6 but bombed numerous chances with the likes of Jake Mamo, Niall Evalds and Jordan Turner all spurning good ball opportunities.
With that, Radford believes his side had enough to win two games.
“Credit where credit is due, the reason they’ve such a target on their back is their ability to stay in arms wrestles and land that sucker punch when that opportunity presents itself,” Radford said.
“I thought we created enough to win two games of rugby there. That’s where we’ve got to develop and grow as a team and learn how to stay in that fight and arm wrestle that those fellas have.”
The Castleford boss when asked as to why so many chances went missing, said: “You’d have to ask some of the fellas how, it was incredible to watch.
“Our focus with the football was to finish up field and kick better and not to score on every opportunity. That penny didn’t drop unfortunately, we got into space and almost forgot what to do at times.
“We didn’t see so much of the ball because of those errors. We made a break and it came back on our try line. It was a funny old game.”
There were two major talking points for the Tigers, with Jack Welsby staying on the field despite giving away a penalty try for a high tackle and Bureta Faraimo inexplicably diving over the touchline with the whitewash begging.
“He (Bureta) only needed to touch that front line with the ball. I don’t have anything on that,” Radford said.
“Jack (Broadbent) would have scored if he hadn’t had his head taken off. You’d have to ask the man in the middle that question.
“He stayed on and we scored which put us back in it but we didn’t go any further.
“I don’t think the officials cost us today, that was the least of our focus this week.
“Growing as a team and being able to stay in that arm wrestle longer and coming out the other end of it is a priority.”
Radford also revealed that this week has been difficult on the back of the 32-30 defeat to Hull FC last week.
“This week has been a difficult week for me as a coach, I’ve had that knot in my stomach all week because of what went on last week but today we can do something with that.
“They were all performance decisions, hopefully we can only answer that in actions, words are very cheap. ”
One man who did go off injured was Jake Mamo with Radford confirming “his back stopped him from moving”.”
