Castleford Tigers captain Alex Mellor has given his verdict following the club’s 40-10 pre-season defeat to St Helens, admitting that whilst it was ‘disappointing’, the team are ‘not downhearted’.
The Tigers traveled to St Helens on Saturday for their first game of the pre-season but came out on the wrong side of a heavy defeat, though Saints did rack up a couple of late tries.
NRL recruit Mikaele Ravalawa bagged a brace on debut with coach Ryan Carr getting to test out a number of new combinations, as well as his new-look spine that features three new additions in Blake Taafee, Tom Weaver and Liam Hood.
Also playing was newly-confirmed captain Alex Mellor with the second-rower giving his thoughts on the club’s YouTube channel.
“The final result is disappointing,” he admitted, before offering a realistic evaluation.
“We’ve spoke in there about not accepting losing this year. Losing is not part of us at all so to come out on that with a 40-point scoreline is not the greatest.”
Castleford Tigers captain sends message to fans
Games in pre-season are all about learning and that’s something Mellor believes Castleford got from the match with the skipper insisted that whilst his side will not accept losing, they were able to take plenty from the match.
He explained: “I feel like we learnt a lot from that game, it’s obviously our first hit out and we’ve got a lot of new combinations and a new spine so it certainly gives us confidence and gives us something to take away.
“We’re not downhearted about that performance, it’s a trial game and it’s our first hit-out. We do not want to lose, I’ll emphasise that, but we’re going to learn from that and we’ll see where we go and how we put things right.”
The 31-year-old was also asked about his recent confirmation as captain, responding: “It’s a real honour for me. I’m in my fifth season here, I know how big this club is, I know how proud this town is and what I want to do is show how much it means to the town.”
Continuing, Mellor used his first words as captain to send a message to the fans, stating: “If we can get playing well and get fans back onside and get a bit of a fortress down at the Jungle and then give these fans what they deserve.
“They’ve had three tough years and there is a lot of us in this group that have but there’s a lot of exciting players that we’ve brought in, and Carry has brought a lot of belief into the group.
“They’re always massive for us, we’ve had quite a lot of tough years but they’ve always stuck with us and I think they feel the belief that we feel. We want to give back to the fans that turn out in numbers.”
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