Castleford Tigers Suffer Humiliating Defeat Against St Helens

In a dismal display, Castleford Tigers fell to a 60-4 defeat against a dominant St Helens side, conceding 52 unanswered points in the second half. The loss comes as a significant setback for Craig Lingard’s team, who had recently shown signs of improvement with wins over London Broncos and a draw against Leigh Leopards.

Lingard Criticizes Team’s “Immense Naivety”

Lingard did not mince his words in the post-match press conference, slamming his players’ performance as “extremely poor.” The head coach lamented his team’s “immense amount of naivety” in the first half, where they failed to capitalize on St Helens being reduced to 12 men early on.

“We showed an immense amount of naivety in that first half when Saints went down to 12 and we didn’t manage the game at all,” Lingard said. “We kept sending the message on to make sure ‘let’s go back against the grain, inside balls, let’s test them out’, but then we kept going wide and kept going wide, didn’t complete it, just over 40% in that first half.”

Disastrous Second Half Performance

The second half was even more disastrous for the Tigers, as they conceded 46 points in just 28 minutes after Liam Horne’s sending-off. Lingard described his team’s performance during this period as “just dumb, it’s just dumb rugby and it’s almost like we’re taking shortcuts and you’ve got to be smart in that respect.“

The humiliating nature of the defeat has left Castleford Tigers with a significant amount of ground to make up in the Rugby League table. The team will now have a week off before facing fellow strugglers Hull FC in a crucial match as they look to bounce back from this disappointing result.

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