Castleford Tigers Finally Reap Rewards But Craig Lingard Issues Bigger Warning

The Tigers picked up one of the wins of the season, beating St Helens on their own patch.

Castleford boss Craig Lingard was pleased to finally “get over the line” following close results in recent weeks after they stunned St Helens with an 8-6 victory at the Totally Wicked Stadium. Both sides failed to fire in a closely-fought first period until Sam Royle produced a moment of magic to give the Saints a 4-0 half-time lead.

The half-time break did not improve for the hosts, who were looking to keep up the pressure on league leaders Wigan, and Castleford were still well within the contest despite Mark Percival’s penalty adding another two points on the board. The Tigers’ confidence was boosted when Innes Senior dotted down in the corner and they were gifted two penalty opportunities at the end of the half, which Rowan Milnes converted to earn a valuable victory for Castleford.

Lingard was happy to watch his side get the reward their efforts deserve following close defeats to Hull KR and Wigan in recent weeks.

“Really pleased, it’s a good win but good to come to Saints to get a win which doesn’t happen often, for us to get over the line, for the last few weeks it’s been coming. I thought we were outstanding defensively. We talked about concentrating on the defensive element. We’ve had a chance of winning the previous two games and not got over the line, but today we’ve got on the right side of one.

“We were in the game, we were only four points behind at half-time. We’ve got really good at dealing with stuff that goes against us and building the resilience.”

Castleford come against basement side London Broncos next week and Lingard wants to carry the momentum into that fixture to push them up the table.

He added: “There’s no point coming to St Helens and winning then going to London next week and getting beat, it means nothing so we’ve got to make sure we perform and the attitude stays there. Hopefully we can pick up a couple more wins between now and the end of the season, and start looking up rather than down.

“The last few minutes when we were under pressure on our goal-line and we kept coming up with an answer, that was really pleasing because in previous weeks we could have lost that game.”