Castleford 6 Warrington 44: Tackle which places Tigers’ Gale in hospital goes unpunished

Gale never fully recovered from a head knock in the opening stages of this home defeat by Warrington and was taken off after 17 minutes.

Powell was last night waiting for news of the injury, but insisted the challenge was worthy of a red card.

“Without a doubt,” he said. “It was a clear strike to the head. He didn’t even get 10 minutes. I don’t know what’s going on.

“How you can miss that when you’ve got five people (officials) out there is beyond me. It was a disgraceful tackle and very poor by everybody concerned.

“He’s in hospital now. I don’t know how bad he is but he looked really distressed when I saw him. He’ll have a full check-up and hopefully he will be okay.”

Castleford sorely missed Gale’s creativity, but Powell had no complaints over the result, which brought their regular campaign to an end on a low note.

“I thought the signs were there before that,” Powell said. “I thought they might have beaten us with 12 men. We were really shabby. Warrington were on the button. I thought they were excellent and had too much intent for us.

“We looked like we had a week off next week and they looked like they had something to build against. I thought it would have been the other way round.

“It was disappointing that our commitment and effort was way off. We’ve got to get to grips with that before the next game.

“We’re got to respond. We’re in the Super 8s now and it’s a brand new competition.”

Warrington’s nine-try rout was the perfect preparation for their Ladbrokes Challenge Cup semi-final against Hull KR on Saturday and the start of the Super 8s the following week.

“It’s good to perform well, regardless of what’s next week or beyond that,” Wolves coach Tony Smith said.

“We’ve performed well for the last four or five weeks, I think we’ve been building up for a really good performance.

“I thought my boys played the weather exceptionally well and on attack we had a really good first half.

“That sort of score can happen on any given day if momentum goes against you, it doesn’t meant you are a good team or bad team.”

Warrington expect to welcome Australian scrum-half Chris Sandow, to the club this week, but Smith was delighted with the performance of the man he has been signed to replace, Richie Myler, as well as his half-back partner Gareth O’Brien who both got on the scoresheet.

Some of the gloss was taken from Warrington’s win by the loss of full-back Matty Russell, who looks certain to miss the Cup semi-final with an ankle injury.

Castleford Tigers: Dorn, Gibson, Webster, Shenton, Carney, Finn, Gale, Lynch, Milner, Millington, O. Holmes, McMeeken, Springer. Substitutes: Boyle, Cook, Moors, Roberts.

Warrington Wolves: Russell, Ormsby, Ratchford, Atkins, Monaghan, O’Brien, Myler, Hill, Clark, Sims, Westwood, Currie, Harrison. Substitutes: Dwyer, Asotasi, Wilde, England.

Referee: Phil Bentham (RFL).