St Helens were far too hot for Castleford Tigers to handle admits coach Daryl Powell

That was how coach Daryl Powell’s summarised Castleford Tigers’ 36-16 defeat by red-hot St Helens outfit at Anfield.

Tigers scored once in the first half and added two late tries, but Saints were always in control as they handed Powell his first Magic Weekend defeat.

Yesterday was Castleford’s eighth defeat from their last 12 league games and Powell reflected: “I thought we started well and put Saints under a fair bit of pressure.

“The one thing they are good at is they hold their line really well.

“They are a really durable defensive team so we struggled to break them down and then we came up with an error they made a clean line break and scored from and that let a bit of air out of our tyres.”

Powell admitted: “We are not resilient enough at the moment, we are not at that level where we are beating Saints at the moment.

“They are playing right on top of their game and we’re not. We’ve got to find a way to piece it together a little bit.

“Obviously getting some of our better players back would help us, but we had a really positive week and we were looking forward to it.

“We started and finished in a really bright fashion, but in between was a mixed bag.

“There were some bright periods from us, but nowhere near enough to beat Saints at their best.”

Powell felt some of Saints’ tries were owing to “people not working hard enough or switching off, losing concentration for a brief period”.

He added: “I am not sure we believe at the moment we can roll a team like Saints.

“Rugby league players don’t give up and we worked hard right to the end.

“We got a couple of tries which made it look a bit more respectable.

“We have got to find a way to keep battling and get some of our injured players back and touch wood we will start to look a bit more like the team we know we can be.”