Castleford Tigers' Jordan Turner 'not impressed' by St Helens World Club win: champs a credit to Super League

Tigers play host to Saints on Sunday, eight days after the Betfred Super League champions’ historic golden-point win at NRL title holders Penrith Panthers.

The result has been widely hailed as the best-ever by an English side, but Turner - a former Saints player - reckons it was par for the course.

“This isn’t meant to sound derogatory at all, but I wasn’t impressed because I know how good St Helens are,” Turner said.

“I was having jibes at [teammate] Kenny Edwards all week who was saying they’ll get beaten by 40. I was saying ‘just watch’.

“They have some players who are world beaters and I wasn’t surprised by what they did. They were by far the better team and I think they’ve done Super League and English rugby league a big justice.”

In contrast, Tigers’ Super League campaign began with a 32-30 defeat at Hull last Sunday and Turner took no consolation from their fightback after they trailed by 26 points with a quarter of the game remaining.

He admitted “for some reason it just didn’t happen for us”, which means amends need to be made on Sunday.

“This week we’ve got to front up,” he said. “It is a big one for us and we’ve got to show what we are made of.”

St Helens are the toughest-possible opponents, but circumstances have given Tigers a helping hand.

Though Paul Wellens has rested key players for his first Super League game as Saints coach, Turner insisted what the opposition come up with isn’t as important as Tigers’ response to their round one setback.

“We can’t go into the game worrying about what they might do, whether they might be jet lagged and stuff like that,” he said.

“We have got to focus on ourselves because we didn’t turn up last week. There’s going to be a big crowd, Sunday afternoon at Wheldon Road is a great place to play and we need to get off to a good start.

“Last year we didn’t do that and ever since I’ve been at this club we haven’t played too well at home so I think it’s time we turned that on its head and started playing well in front of our own fans.”