Revenge or Repeat? Tigers looking to upset in-form Saints after last month’s Challenge Cup final

Castleford Tigers will be looking to avenge their Challenge Cup final defeat to St Helens when the two sides lock horns at the Totally Wicked Stadium on Thursday evening in Super League action.

Daryl Powell’s Tigers side head into the game knowing that they need a near-perfect end to the season if they are to claim a play-off spot and have chance of progressing onto the Grand Final, and after a run of five consecutive defeats, they did stop the rot last time out. Away at Leeds Rhinos, a brace of tries from Greg Eden and some good work with the boot by Danny Richardson helped to fire them to a surprise 18-32 victory, collecting two points for the first time in little under two months. There’s no doubting though the tough test that they will face against the Saints this week. A win against ‘the Red V’ is a rare feat for any side over the last few seasons, Warrington Wolves and Catalans Dragons (1st and 3rd in the league table respectively) the only two sides to have inflicted defeat on Kristian Woolf’s side so far in this campaign. In fact, having lost over in France to the Dragons, the Saints got their own back and gained ground on the league leaders in their last outing, running out 34-12 winners. Despite coming out on top, head coach Woolf was disappointed with the stop-start nature of that fixture and believed that his team dropped their intensity once they had got themselves into a good position on the scoreline. He was happy with the ability to score points however, in what were terrible conditions throughout.

That points-scoring ability has lacked at times this year, highlighted further when you consider just how good the Saints’ defence has been, conceding just 118 points in 14 games. Beyond impressive, that’s an average of just over 8 points per game. Warrington are the next best team in terms of points conceded and despite averaging just over 16 conceded per game, that’s nearly double Saints.

Being able to manage their set completion and control their defence in such a strong and professional manner is something that Woolf has been able to bring to the club over the last year and a half, and winning back-to-back Super League title shows just how much of an impact his defensive style has had at the Totally Wicked stadium.

Compare that to Thursday’s visitors and it’s the polar opposite as Powell’s side have conceded over 400 points, giving them one of the worst defensive records in the league. At the time of writing, only Salford Red Devils, Wakefield Trinity and Leigh Centurions – Super League’s bottom three respectively – have conceded more.

The biggest issue for the Fords is their strength in the middle of the pitch, and that’s something that new head coach Lee Radford – taking charge from 2022 – will be working towards improving. He has already done so in some part with local lad Joe Westerman returning to the Jungle as of next season from Wakefield.

However, this season must be completed first and if Cas need any extra incentive to go and win on Thursday, it comes in the form of last month’s Challenge Cup final defeat to the Saints at Wembley. 12-6 up at half-time, the Tigers failed to score in the second half and lost out 12-26 come the sound of the final hooter. Revenge would be sweet, but the history books suggests it will be no easy challenge. The last time a Tigers side defeated the Saints in a league game away from home was in 1991, 30 years ago. That’s a long time to wait for a win, but the ‘curse’ has got to come to an end at some point, and in his last season with the Fords before moving on to Warrington, boss Powell would undoubtedly love to be the one to end it with two points on Thursday.

Squad News:

Liam Watts, Cheyse Blair, and George Griffin all return to the matchday squad for the Tigers after missing out on last week’s victory at Leeds. Respectively, Alex Foster and Brad Graham both lose their places in the squad, as does emergency loanee turned try-scorer from last week in Jimmy Keinhorst who returns to Hull Kingston Rovers now his two-week loan spell has come to an end. As for St Helens, Matty Lees (head) and James Bentley (broken leg) both return into contention having recovered from their respective injuries. Lees picked his up in victory over Hull FC earlier this month, but Bentley has been out of action for four months. His leg injury was suffered back in a win away at Super League’s bottom club Leigh Centurions in April. Both squads for the meeting at the Totally Wicked stadium can be found below: St Helens: 1. Lachlan Coote, 2. Tommy Makinson, 3. Kevin Naiqama, 4. Mark Percival, 5, Regan Grace, 6, Jonny Lomax, 8. Alex Walmsley, 9. James Roby, 10. Matty Lees, 11. Joel Thompson, 12, James Bentley, 14. Sione Mata’utia, 15. LMS, 16. Kyle Amor, 17, Agnatius Paasi, 18. Jack Welsby, 19, Aaron Smith, 20, Joe Batchelor, 21. Lewis Dodd, 22, Josh Simm, 29, Ben Davies. Castleford Tigers: 1. Niall Evalds, 2. Derrell Olpherts, 3. Peter Mata’utia, 7. Danny Richardson, 8. Liam Watts, 9. Paul McShane, 10. Grant Millington, 11. Oliver Holmes, 12. Cheyse Blair. 13. Adam Milner, 14. Nathan Massey, 15. George Griffin, 19. Tyla Hepi, 20. James Clare, 21. Jesse Sene-Lefao, 22. Daniel Smith, 23. Greg Eden, 24. Suaia Matagi, 25. Jordan Turner, 26. Lewis Bienek, 31. Gareth O’Brien Follow us on Twitter @ProstInt