Castleford Tigers 16 Salford Red Devils 32: Dorn's in-game injury one setback too many for Tigers concedes head coach Powell

Castleford were without Ben Roberts, Grant Millington and Junior Moors, who were hurt in the previous week’s loss at St Helens. Oliver Holmes missed the match after suffering a knee injury in training, and Luke Dorn limped off in the second half with a hamstring problem. Powell said: “It’s disappointing, obviously.

“I think there’s too many poor things in our game at the moment – either errors or our lack of control of our kicking game at the start of the second half, when I thought we’d started really brightly.

“We are getting belted with our share of injuries at the moment. We have got a lot of people who are outstanding rugby league players sat on their backsides at the moment.

“But I am not making excuses; we have got to improve on that. We made 15 errors last week and another chunk [yesterday]. Rugby league is a game for tough men and we are going to have to be really tough over the coming weeks, because we got another injury, to Luke Dorn. That forced a big reshuffle and it probably cost us, having a hooker on the wing. It was really difficult for Adam Milner, but ultimately I am really disappointed.”

Tigers trailed 20-6 after almost an hour, but cut the gap to four points and were pressing for a winner when an interception by Ben Murdoch-Masila swung the momentum back in Salford’s favour.

“That was a massive turning point, with Masila getting his hand on that ball when [Nathan] Massey’s through a big hole,” Powell said.

“I thought we had really done really well to fight our way back. I thought we were probably going to win the game at that point.”

Powell said Tigers, who visit Warrington Wolves on Friday, need to make fewer errors.

“The spirit and toughness and commitment is all there, regardless of who takes the field,” he said. But we have to be better, particularly when so many high-quality players are missing. You have to be high completions – we were 60-odd and 50-odd per cent in each half and that’s clearly not good enough to win a Super League game.”