Jake Trueman latest as Lee Radford reveals extent of Castleford Tigers adversity

The playmaker had a big say in Castleford's impressive victory in front of the Sky Sports cameras, scoring a scintillating solo try and laying on two more for Derrell Olpherts in the first half.

Trueman gave the Tigers a scare when he eventually hobbled off after trying to play through the pain - but Radford is not overly concerned about the injury.

"Hopefully not too bad," said Radford, who confirmed Ryan Hampshire will miss the rest of the season with an ACL injury.

"It locked and then he played on and it locked again. Hopefully (head physio) Matty Crowther can work his magic this week for us."

A third win in a row takes Castleford up to fifth place in Super League but Radford's men had to do it tough against the Giants.

"We had Macca (Paul McShane) on the bench who was carrying a dead leg, Truey is busted with his knee and George Lawler couldn't go into nine because he's got a back spasm," said Radford.

"Adam Milner is struggling with his knee and Kenny Edwards was on one leg towards the end.

"The effort was phenomenal. That's three weeks running now that they've really turned up for each other. In the first half, they just looked like they enjoyed defending and wanted to defend.

"That's something that's taken a while to come. We've got to keep hold of that now because the importance of it is obviously massive for us."

Niall Evalds missed out on his long-awaited comeback at the 11th hour, meaning Greg Eden had to slot in at full-back.

"The doctor rang at 5pm and told me Niall has got a chest infection and is coughing up blood," said Radford.

"He was three hours away from playing. Greg was 18th man and again, just another obstacle thrown at us.

"But I thought Greg did a really good job. Again, his effort was phenomenal."

While the Tigers celebrated a big win in their pursuit of a play-off spot, Huddersfield were left to reflect on a first defeat in seven Super League games.

The Giants remain well placed in the top four but Ian Watson is viewing the result as a wake-up call for his squad.

"It's disappointing," he said. "We didn't play anything like we've been playing all year.

"We're going to have to put it down to one of those games. We know how to fix it up and that's getting back on the training field and getting back to our processes.

"I think it's got to be a reality check for our whole squad. The Hull KR performance wasn't great and this was worse than that."

Huddersfield struggled to fire in attack in the absence of powerful centre Ricky Leutele but the club have received a positive update on his knee injury.

"It's better news," said Watson.

"The specialist has said it's more of a grade two so it'll probably be more 10 weeks. He could be back just before the end of the season and for the play-offs."