Never a doubt I would start the game says Tigers prop Huby

He started against Leeds Rhinos despite dislocating his elbow just 13 days previously.

Huby could not prevent a 23-10 defeat in their first Tetley’s Challenge Cup final since 1992 but insisted playing had never been a gamble.

He said: “I’d had a full week’s training, I did everything the coaches had asked me to do and I was always confident. People were knocking me, doubting me but that just makes me even stronger. I didn’t have any (pain-filling) needles, no nothing.

“We saw a specialist last Thursday and I even convinced him I was fit. He couldn’t believe how strong it was compared to what the scans were showing.

“I got through the game which I’m happy about. I only took one pretty bad shot but it lasted 30 seconds and was sweet again.

“I’m just disappointed with the loss. We weren’t good enough. At 16-10 we were back in it and we’d spoken at half-time about field position and being composed.

“We did that for a while but let the game get us away from us and we’ll learn from that.”

Castleford stand-off Marc Sneyd was hauled off after just 25 minutes by coach Daryl Powell.

“I wasn’t too surprised as I didn’t have the best of starts,” he said. “I missed a couple of tackles which you can’t do in big games like this and I can’t fault him for bringing me off. We came in fairly confident but Leeds stuck to the gameplan ten times better than we did and ground it out.”

Leeds’ kicking was superb especially in negating the impact of winger Justin Carney who hardly got his hands on the ball.

“Our back three get us on the front foot but Leeds completely took that away with their kicking, finding touch all the time,” said Sneyd. “They outplayed us.”

Captain Michael Shenton was disappointed with the manner in which Leeds and England winger Ryan Hall was able to barge over twice.

“I don’t think our attitude there to stop him was great and as a team we should have gone after their back three more as Hall and Tom Briscoe really made the difference,” he said. “We took some positives out of it though and we’ve given ourselves a real good chance in Super League so that’s our focus now.”