Castleford Tigers boss Daryl Powell demands improvement from match officials

In recent weeks Warrington Wolves’ Tom Lineham has been banned for eight games after grabbing the testacles of Castleford opponent and St Helens’ Tommy Makinson received a five-match suspension for a similar offence, also on a Tigers player.

Neither player was punished during the game.

Castleford scrum-half Danny Richardson missed Thursday’s 31-19 loss to Huddersfield Giants as a result of what Powell said was an illegal challenge in Tigers' Coral Challenge Cup loss to Hull and the coach insisted “I am asking my team to improve, I am looking to improve - why shouldn’t we ask those boys to improve?"

He said: “They are not good enough at the moment. I have had a few conversations with [referees’ boss] Steve Ganson.

“I go back to the Warrington game when Danny Richardson’s try gets disallowed; I go back to St Helens when Danny Richardson gets put on his backside 10 times on kick pressure, illegal challenges.

“How many squirrel grips and headbutts are you going to take before you start going ‘we’re not having this any more’? It is a constant frustration that nothing is done on the field of play, but people get eight matches, five and six matches and we don’t get any benefit from that.

“Those boys have to improve significantly. I think they are poor, terribly poor.”

Castleford have lost six of their seven games since lockdown ended and slipped from second to seventh in Betfred Super League.

Powell admitted Tigers’ recent run is “frustrating”, but stressed they “have to stay positive.”

Assessing the performance against Giants, he said: I thought we were really good for large parts, but there were some real swings in the game and we were on the wrong end of those.

“It was a close game and we are battling our way through quite a few things at the moment - as a result we have limited consistency in what we are doing as a team and we just hurt ourselves a little bit too much at times.

“We are putting some decent plans together as coaches and the players are working hard to deliver them. They are doing a good job for large periods, but we lose concentration and get unravelled too often at the moment.”

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