Castleford Tigers boss Lee Radford airs frustrations over Joe Westerman coverage

The Tigers travelled to the MKM Stadium at the end of a difficult week which saw Westerman dominate column inches in national newspapers after a video of the loose forward engaged in a sex act with a woman in public went viral.

Radford has called for greater balance after St Helens' epic World Club Challenge win over Penrith Panthers barely registered outside the heartlands.

Asked how the off-field scandal affected Castleford in the build-up to the round one clash, Radford replied: "I've no gauge for that.

"That's not what we should be talking about. We've just had a team go over to Australia and beat Penrith Panthers.

"That should be front line and centre of the media but unfortunately we're talking about something else and that's a slight frustration.

"It pi**es me off when you have the start of a Super League campaign and so much going on around the game and we make The Sun newspaper for this."

Westerman played a part in a thrilling comeback in his second spell as Castleford threatened to snatch the competition points from Hull's grasp.

Trailing 32-6 with 20 minutes remaining, the Tigers scored four late tries to set up a grandstand finish.

In the end, they were left to rue a slow start as they launched their campaign with a frustrating 32-30 defeat.

"He (Westerman) was okay in terms of performance," said Radford.

"Like a lot of players within the group, he was not where he needed to be as an individual and we were not where we needed to be as a team."

It was a winning start for Tony Smith but he was left sweating over the result after seeing his team take their foot off the gas in the closing stages.

He is hoping the Hull faithful were left encouraged for the rest of the campaign.

“Nobody can go home saying they were not entertained by both teams," said Smith. “Cas played some really good stuff in the second half

"They (the fans) were riding us home. Hopefully they see enough entertainment in us to come back.

"Some people like horror movies and scary movies and there was a bit of all of that in the second half."