Andy Last insists Castleford ‘must learn lessons quickly’ after Leigh loss

Castleford coach Andy Last insists his side need to fix things up immediately after suffering their ninth defeat of the season at the hands of Leigh.

The Tigers remain second bottom in the Super League table after Round 11, four points above winless neighbours Wakefield.

Castleford took the lead through Joe Westerman before Leigh tied the score at 6-6 thanks to a try and conversion from Ben Reynolds. It was all square at the break.

It was all Leigh in the second half though as they scored 24 unanswered points, with tries coming from Ava Seumanufagai, Ricky Leutele and Matty Davis as Leigh wrapped up 30-6 victory at home.

Speaking after the game, Last said: “It was a game of two halves for us. I thought it was a really close contest between two evenly matched teams in that first half.

“We didn’t convert a couple of chances that we created, made a couple of line breaks but weren’t able to find the right pass or come up with the right option on the back of those line breaks and that proved costly once again.

“We spoke at half-time about tidying up our last tackle plays and spoke about playing with a little bit more control once we got in to good field position but the start of the second half, I think George Griffin dropped the ball and that set the tone for the whole half.

“I thought in the second half Leigh dominated us physically, we played too one out because me made a couple of errors. You worry about passing the ball so you go one out and that allows them to tee off on you and they did.

“They dominated us physically and dominated field position”

“We kicked the ball from inside our 30 and 40 on numerous occasions and I can’t recall us having one good play the ball in good field position (in the second half) so it was a really disappointing second half.

“We’ve got to lick our wounds, it is a very dejected dressing room as you can imagine.

“We’ve got to get them off the canvas, review it, speak with some home truths and make sure we learn from what happened tonight and try to make some improvements before we play Catalans on Friday.”

Andy Last: We need to learn lessons quickly

It has been a poor start to the 2023 campaign from the Tigers, who have won just two from 11 games.

Castleford will aim to get more points on the board when they host Catalans at the Jungle next Friday.

Last added: “The fact that we were kicking it from our own 40 and just being fairly meaningless kicks, just midfield bombs and hitting them in hope that Gaz (O’Brien, Leigh full-back) was going to come up with an error was disappointing.

“They were able to pick us apart because our energy levels were depleted so there’s some big lessons to learn and we need to learn them quickly.”

Last reported no new injuries on the back of the Leigh game. He said that outside-back Mahe Fonua could return for Friday’s game against Catalans.

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