Castleford coach offers blunt view on controversial referee calls in Leigh loss

Castleford Tigers coach Ryan Carr refused to discuss whether or not he felt his team were on the wrong end of some controversial refereeing calls in their loss to Leigh: saying he didn’t want to receive another fine from the RFL.

The Tigers fought valiantly against the Leopards but ultimately fell just short of a third successive win, with Adam Cook’s late try sealing a 24-14 win for the visitors.

But the momentum of the game swung on two crucial moments in either half. Castleford were leading 8-0 when Jason Qareqare’s break was pulled back for an apparent obstruction from Daejarn Asi – and seconds later, Leigh scored their first try of the night. They would go on to score 18 unanswered points.

The last of those points came when Jack Hughes touched down but two minutes earlier, Hughes had appeared to catch Krystian Mapapalangi with a forearm to the face in the act of making a tackle, which was missed by the touch judge close to the play.

Carr was asked on multiple occasions about those incidents – but said he simply couldn’t discuss them.

“It’s a game of moments,” he said. “We’re talking a game of moments on one hand that if we got it right, we win.”

When asked if some of those moments were the big disciplinary calls, he said: “I can’t mate. I’ve already been fined so I’m not going to talk about it, sorry.

“You know my thoughts, everyone knows my thoughts. I haven’t looked at the footage, I’ll go back and have a look but it’s gone now. You can’t change it, that’s the worst bit about it.

‘The players are super frustrated’

“The players speak to me and they’re super frustrated. Maps was frustrated when he got elbowed to the head and for my player, I feel bad for him. But I’ve got to accept it – I’m not questioning anything or debating anything. But he’s okay and hopefully he’s got nothing wrong with his face.

“Sometimes we’re too honest but I’ve told them all along to just get on with it. You can’t control these things, you’ve just got to try and do your best.”

Carr also said there were aspects of the game he felt his team could have handled better and had they done so, it could have been them recording a third successive win to close the gap on the play-off places.

“The moments I’m talking about, we could have controlled them really well,” he said. “We’ve got to be a team that absorb those moments.”