Castleford coach sends strong ‘mentality’ message ahead of Warrington clash with expectations clear

Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr says the club’s ‘mentality’ must change, but admits making that happen is tough with his hands largely tied on squad selection.

Appointed ahead of the 2026 campaign, Carr’s first year in charge at The Jungle has been a difficult one thus far, with his side sat tenth on the Super League ladder.

The Tigers have won only one of their last five games, being beaten by rivals Wakefield twice during that sequence including last weekend at Belle Vue: where Trinity were down to 12 men just 22 minutes in but still ended up very comfortable 52-14 victors.

This weekend, Cas return home, with play-off hopefuls Warrington Wolves the visitors.

And ahead of that clash, Carr has sent a strong message to his squad.

‘We try to work hard with those individuals but it’s hard when you can’t just go, ‘you’re out, you’re in’… it was a never-ending cycle’

The Australian undertook pre-match media duties on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the clash with Warrington.

He said: “We know internally what we need to fix.

“It’s not a collective thing. If we turned up and didn’t start as we did against them (Wakefield), up 10-6 early playing some really good footy on the back of a really tough game, it’d be a collective thing.

“But our preparation hasn’t changed once, that detail hasn’t changed once, it’s probably just the games where we’ve had some bad losses, we’ve been pretty banged up during those games and people have moved around within those games.

“It’s not an excuse, it’s just the reality.

“We try to work hard with those individuals but it’s hard when you can’t just go, ‘you’re out, you’re in’. You’ve got to work the best you can as a group to get our mentality right.

“Probably the biggest catalyst is that when momentum has been against us, we haven’t been able to stop it and swing it back in our favour in some games.

“When you can’t touch the ball, you’re never going to win. We had 35% possession, which is the lowest I’ve ever seen… it’s the lowest in Super League this year, that’s why we didn’t win.

“We didn’t want to fight hard enough to get the ball back. It was a never-ending cycle. We’ve addressed why and worked hard on trying to correct that.”

‘You want to win everything, I want to win everything I do, that’s what competitors do. But you can only do your best in the given situation’

Carr has made no secret throughout the season that the Tigers are in for a fairly sizeable rebuild ahead of 2027, with a number of NRL recruits already official alongside the signing of front-rower Robbie Mulhern from Leigh Leopards.

For now, he will have to continue managing expectations, but wants those expectations to increase from the level they sit at currently.

The 37-year-old explained: ” There’s a plan in place, and while we’re not looking too far ahead, there’s a long-term plan and a short-term plan.

“Sometimes they don’t always go to plan, but sometimes all you can do is do what you can to stick to that plan.

“We’ve got a great board here and a great owner in Martin (Jepson), they give us their full backing. The alignment is really strong. but we’ve got to make sure we stay on track.

“You want to win everything, I want to win everything I do, that’s what competitors do.

“But you can only do your best in the given situation. We’re going to do our best on Saturday and there’s nothing to say we don’t want to win that, of course we want to win… we expect ourselves to win and we’ve got to.

“We’re working hard to change expectations as a club… instead of just being okay with something, we expect to be the absolute best version of ourselves every day.”

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