Castleford Tigers 12 Wigan Warriors 32: Second half horror show condemns hosts to costly Super League defeat

For the first 40 minutes Wigan looked exactly like a side that had spent the past week celebrating a Challenge Cup win, but the second half was a completely different story.

Having led 12-0 after 24 minutes, Castleford lost their grip on the game and Wigan ran in six unanswered tries to condemn the hosted to a second successive defeat.

Second-rower Kenny Edwards could hold his head high, but Castleford were comprehensively outplayed in the second half.

In front of a 6,497 crowd, the prolific Greg Eden returned to Tigers’ side for the first time since their Easter win over Wakefield Trinity and was immediately back among the tries, opening the scoring after six minutes.

The fit-again winger galloped over untouched from Jake Truman’s long pass in the set after Bevan French had spilled a kick from Gareth O’Brien.

O’Brien converted, but missed with a relatively straightforward penalty attempt after Wigan were caught offside 12 minutes later.

Edwards shrugged off some half-hearted Wigan defence to score Tigers’ second try on 24 minutes, improved by O’Brien, who did not appear for the second half, but there was nothing for Cas to celebrate after that.

Liam Marshall, whose late try won the Cup final, twice got over the line from passes by French.

The first was forward, but the second - on 33 minutes - broke the visitors’ duck, though it wasn’t converted.

That came against 12 men, moments after Mahe Fonua had been sin-binned for kicking out at Liam Farrell.

Tigers’ eight-point interval lead was turned into a four-point deficit within nine minutes of the resumption.

Wigan scored a brilliant try five minutes into the second period, keeping the ball alive on the last before French ran through to touch down from Marshall’s improvised kick.

Abbas Miski crossed moments later - though the final pass from Farrell was dubious - and Harry Smith improved both tries to give the visitors a 16-12 lead.

Wigan added four more points on 54 minutes when Marshall crossed for his second try, from a long pass by French.

By this stage Wigan were running Tigers ragged and they added a fifth touchdown with 18 minute left, again on the last, when Jake Bibby reached over from a pass by Smith whose conversion made it 26-12.

Tigers had a brief spell of pressure late on, Derrell Olpherts and Trueman both going close, but Wigan had the last laugh when Farrell stepped through in the 78th minute and Smith’s fourth goal completed the scoring.