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Castleford Tigers charge is left crushed by Catalan Dragons
Copyright Dave Williams ( rlphotos.com ) Tele 0113 2603398 Mobile 07733320730 50 Green Lane Leeds LS15 7EW Catalans v Castleford.
Catalan Dragons finished strongly to record a Stobart Super League victory at the expense of Castleford on Saturday.
The French side ran in five tries to take the sparkle off an impressive individual contribution from the visitors’ Josh Griffin who scored a hat-trick of tries in vain.
Cas made a dream start to the game as they retained the ball from a short kick-off, and a long cut-out pass by Rangi Chase found Griffin in plenty of space, with the winger diving in to score in the corner.
Kirk Dixon missed the conversion from close to the touchline, and that looked costly as Catalan put on a set move from a scrum 10 metres from the Castleford try-line.
With Clint Greenshields linking into the line to create an overlap, the full-back sent in winger Thomas Bosc for the try. Scott Dureau added the conversion from out on the left to give the Catalans a scarcely-deserved lead after 13 minutes.
Brawl
Steve Nash and Jason Baitieri were both sent to the sin bin for their involvement in a brawl sparked by a Castleford high tackle.
The visitors were soon in again and it was Griffin again who pounced on a mix-up between Leon Pryce and Sebastien Raguin to race in from 40 metres out and touch down under the posts.
Dixon this time made no mistake with the conversion as he extended the Castleford lead to 10-6.
After 24 minutes Chase took centre stage as he bumped off an attempted tackle from Dureau and sent Arundel clear.
Arundel just managed to crash over the line despite Greenshields’ best efforts to pull him down. Dixon again added the extra two points to give the Tigers a 10-point lead.
The score remained the same until half-time, but the first half gave little indication of what was to follow the interval.
After four minutes of the second half, and with coach Trent Robinson’s words ringing in their ears, a short side play by Ian Henderson found Vincent Dupport and the France international managed to put the ball down in the corner one-handed despite the attentions of three Castleford players. Dureau missed the conversion.
Griffin dived in to complete his hat-trick on the 50-minute mark after good passing along the line created space for an overlap. Dixon again failed with the touchline conversion effort but the Tigers led 20-10.
Ian Henderson was at the heart of the Dragons fightback and had a key role in the 55th-minute try which set the comeback in motion.
His kick to the right corner was knocked back by Damien Blanch and eventually found its way back to Henderson who kicked to the left and found Daryl Millard who dived over to score.
Dureau added the conversion to narrow the gap to four points.
The Dragons broke Castleford hearts in the last 10 minutes as first Pryce made one of the few line breaks in the game to find Greenshields and the full-back in turn found the supporting Millard who touched down to level the scores. Dureau again added the conversion to give the Dragons the lead.
With seven minutes to go, Dureau’s dummy and run created space for Steve Menzies to run into and his dummy out wide fooled the Castleford defence.
After Menzies drew the full-back he fed a simple pass inside to Baitieri to score and seal victory for the Dragons. Dureau added the conversion from in front of the posts to give the Dragons their eight-point victory margin.
Castleford boss Ian Millward was left upbeat despite his side’s loss in the south of France.
Millward said: “I’ve got to say that’s probably the best we’ve played this year so far, I’m very proud of my players from the first half.
“I thought our attack was very, very good and we were unlucky not to score some more points.
“We got a little bit tired later on in the game and they’ve got some big forwards and they bent us back and started making some momentum in the ruck area but there wasn’t much in the game.
“It’s very pleasing for me because I rate Les Catalans very highly and I think they’ll finish in the top four.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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