Castleford Tigers' Alex Foster proving thorn in side of former club Leeds Rhinos

The Castleford forward has been a try scorer in Tigers’ last four meetings with the side where he began his professional career.

He bagged the second touchdown in Tigers’ 38-10 victory at the Dacia Magic Weekend in Newcastle three days ago, an effort which helped him win the fans’ vote for the game’s most valuable player.

“I don’t know what it is,” admitted the 24-year-old of his record against Leeds.

“It just must be a bit of luck I’ve got against the Rhinos. I don’t think I’ve scored that many tries against anyone else accumulatively!

“It is just a bit of luck and everyone’s always raring to go against the Rhinos, being the champions and the top team they are.

“It is a game I always look at on the fixture list and want to play well in.”

The win over Leeds was arguably Tigers’ most complete performance of what has been an inconsistent season so far.

It left them fifth in Betfred Super League, level on points with fourth-placed Hull, but having two games in hand.

Wins in those matches – at Hull Kingston Rovers and home against Wigan Warriors – would lift Tigers to third and keep them firmly in touch with the top two.

“Most importantly, it was a massive win,” said Foster of the derby at St James’ Park. “It was a good performance for the majority of the match.

“We’ve found that hard to come by recently, we’ve been knocking off for large periods of games so it was nice we had nearly a full-match performance. That’s the main thing to take away from it.

“This season we haven’t been great at dominating the game for the full 80 minutes so it was great to really dominate a match and put a big score on someone.

“We had a good 80-minute performance against Catalans at home, but I can’t think of many more games that we’ve really dominated for the large majority of the time.”

Tigers have been in the habit of falling away in the second half of games this year after building a big lead.

They were 22-0 ahead at the break against Leeds and extended that by six points before Rhinos broke their duck. Rhinos had trailed 24-0 after as many minutes in the teams’ previous meeting, two months ago, but staged a thrilling fightback that left Castleford hanging on for a one-point win.

Foster said: “There was a big emphasis on that at half-time.

“We learned from what happened last time at Elland Road when they came back and it was quite tight at the end.

“Last week we weren’t too good after the half-time break either so it was nice to score first and continue the ascendancy.”

Tigers are back in action on Thursday at home to table-topping St Helens, who beat them 36-18 in the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup less than two weeks ago.

“We are coming into a block of games where we’ve got some tough teams to play,” Foster warned.

“To get that victory [last Saturday] under our belt really puts our confidence high and stands us in good stead to play Saints.”