Daryl Powell looks for his Castleford Tigers to be ‘smarter’

They lost 31-18 at home to Hull FC on Thursday and missed the chance to leap above their opponents into third place.

Castleford led 14-4 at the break and were level 18-18 in the 64th minute, but made a series of costly errors to let their rivals take command.

“I thought our game-management in the second half was terrible,” bemoaned Powell, whose side head to Salford Red Devils on Friday. “If you give seven-tackle sets away on any pitch you’re under pressure, but on this pitch you’re back on your own try-line.

“The swings in the game were massive against us. Paul McShane kicks into legs at the start of the second half and then we concede a penalty straight away.

“We had two seven set sets and even though I thought we were in the game all the way through we just hurt ourselves too much and we need to sort it out quickly.

“I thought in the first half we really took control of the game; we defended really well and put Hull under a lot of pressure.

“But the second half was really frustrating.”

Lee Radford’s side twice struck from deep to kill off Castleford’s hopes of avenging their Challenge Cup quarter-final defeat.

“Hull are clinical and are one of those teams who can really take advantage as you saw with the breakaway tries,” added Powell.

“They score from distance pretty well. I saw them at Salford last week and they did a simlar job there.

“We worked hard and the game went away from us in the end, but there’s not an awful lot between those two teams.

“If we’re a little bit smarter in the second half we have a good chance of winning that game.

“We just haven’t got enough players playing consistently well over 80 minutes at the moment.”