DANNY McGuire admitted he was at a loss as to why Castleford Tigers again failed to fire until the closing stages of their 24-14 Betfred Super League defeat to Hull FC.
The hosts had briefly led after Rowan Milnes’ try and conversion cancelled out Herman Ese’ese’s early score for the Black and Whites, only for the visitors to push clear through scores from Aidan Sezer, Tom Briscoe and Lewis Martin.
The defeat left Cas 10th in the table with just one win from their six league matches so far and head coach McGuire, who took over from Craig Lingard in the off-season, was left perplexed by what he saw.
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“When I’m watching them train, when I’m watching them do things in practice, I get excited because I think we’re getting somewhere and then we just can’t transfer it into a game when we’re under pressure and under stress,” McGuire told Sky Sports.
“It falls apart and I need to work out why. I don’t know if it’s something individually we are doing staff-wise or the players just can’t do it, I’m not sure.
“But we’re going to have to keep working, keep practicing, keep educating and hopefully at some point we’ll grasp it.”
Tries from Tex Hoy and Josh Simm inside the final eight minutes gave the final score a little more respectability for the Tigers.
That brought little solace for McGuire, though, who blasted his team for not showing the same level of energy until the contest was beyond them.
“It’s disappointing to see them find some energy late on,” McGuire said.
“I want to see that energy from minute one and to find it on 75 minutes actually annoys me even more because it’s not what we’re about.
“We’re hurting ourselves with some of the decisions, some of the lack of execution, some of the skills and it’s nothing like it looks like in practice.”
Teams:
HULL: Jordan Rapana; Tom Briscoe, Davy Litten, Ed Chamberlain, Lewis Martin; Cade Kust, Aiden Sezer (c); Herman Ese’ese, Amir Bourouh, Liam Knight, Brad Fash, Jordan Lane, John Asiata. Res: Jack Ashworth, Sam Eseh, Will Kirby, Logan Moy.
CASTLEFORD: Tex Hoy; Josh Sim, Zac Cini, Sam Wood (c), Innes Senior; Daejarn Asi, Rowan Milnes; George Lawler, Judah Rimbu, Brad Singleton, Josh Hodson, Alex Mellor, Joe Westerman. Res: Cain Robb, Muiz Mustapha, Daniel Okoro, George Griffin.
Referee: Liam Moore
