It was the win, not the opponent which mattered says Castleford Tigers coach Lee Radford

After three successive defeats, Tigers got off the mark in Super League with a 33-26 home win over his previous club in an 11-try thriller.

Tigers broke their Super League duck six days before the second anniversary of Radford’s sacking by Hull, but he insisted he would rather have got off the mark in round one and stressed: “Just the win was important.

“It wasn’t any more special, it was just special to get a win after what has been three, going on four, weeks’ hard work.”

Castleford went ahead with a try inside the opening 10 seconds and were never behind.

They were without former Hull men Bureta Faraimo and Liam Watts because of suspension and Niall Evalds was ruled out before the game with a hamstring injury.

Radford said: “The manner of the result was important for us as well.

“We took a couple of uppercuts from the disciplinary on Monday and had a couple of hamstring pulls in training, but the determination was there to see.

“We’ve been fantastic this week and today was the end result of that. There were some special efforts in a game that could have gone either way.”

Brett Hodgson, the Hull coach, had no complaints about the result.

He said: “If you don’t have the right attitude, you don’t get the win. Fair play to Cas, they turned up ready to go and we just weren’t good enough.”