Lee Radford admits Castleford Tigers struggled to shift the momentum against Leeds Rhinos

Tigers hit back from 6-0 behind to lead 10-6 at half-time, but went 34-10 down before 10 late points made the scoreline more respectable.

It was their first defeat at Newcastle’s St James’ Park and ended a three-game winning run in Betfred Super League.

“In the first half, I thought our effort and execution was outstanding,” Radford said.

“The indicators were there it was going to be a game of field position and unfortunately, in the second half we came out and there was a period where they had nine sets and we had one.

“We got dominated in that area.

“Most teams in the competition, when you have that amount of field position and possession against you, you don’t look as juicy as when you are fresh and good to go.”

Part of that was due to Rhinos receiving four six-agains to Tigers’ one, which came late in the match.

That statistic left Radford puzzled.

There were no set-restarts for Castleford in their previous game and the coach admitted that is a “frustration”.

He said: “I think we’re bottom of the table for getting sets of six again.

“We are top of the table for running metres, but bottom for that.

“We are winning rucks and winning ground, but we’re not getting any set restarts.

“That’s a question there’s no answer to, other than everybody else is disciplined when they come up against Castleford Tigers.”

But Radford was pleased with the way Tigers stuck to their guns and ended the game strongly.

“What I did like was the finish,” he said.

“We didn’t quit, we cracked on.”

Rhinos ran in five tries from the 45th minute to the 68th and Radford admitted his team “looked really legsy during that period”.

He noted: “The ruck speed got away from us.

“That is disappointing, but the first half was really positive and the last 15.

“We could have thrown the towel in and let it get away from us massively.

“To bring it back to 14 points, I thought was a fair crack.

“When you don’t have possession or territory, you tend to lose.

“What we have got to improve on is a period within that, somebody has got to break its back and unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

With all Tigers’ specialist stand-offs injured and Paul McShane, who could stand-in serving a ban, winger Greg Eden was switched to number six.

Radford revealed: “He had two training sessions. Rocky Hampshire would be a genuine option in the halves, so would Paul McShane, Callum McLelland, Gaz O’Brien and Jake Trueman.

“When you are picking between a winger and a front-rower to play at six for you, you know your shift and fluency probably aren’t going to be where they’ve been throughout the year.

“But none of them are back any time soon so we have got to work on that. Hopefully with a couple more weeks into Greg in that position we can see some improvements and developments.”