News

Posted: Saturday 7th March 2020

Rankin reflects on late Wolves loss

Castleford fell to a 9-8 defeat on Friday night away at Warrington Wolves, Jordan Rankin gives his view on the late drop goal loss.

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One for the purists you could say was the Tigers’ Round Six match at the Halliwell Jones Stadium with both sides locked in a low scoring affair 8-8 and as time ran out each one of the halfbacks for either team had a shot on goal for a one-pointer and missed. But drop goals are not as easy as spectators might believe as the Tigers fullback Jordan Rankin discusses.

“When you get into that zone of only a couple of minutes to go it can be very difficult and it’s in both teams minds so you get into a drop kick-athon, they missed a couple and we missed a few. One of them is bound to go over at some point and unfortunately it wasn’t for us,” Rankin told castlefordtigers.com

“There’s positives to take out of it but in general I don’t think it was our best performance and the opportunity was there for us to get one over Warrington on many occasions but for whatever the reasons we couldn’t come up with the goods. But we move on and we’ll get ready for St Helens next Sunday.”

Balanced as ever reviewing the game, Rankin was honest in saying that whilst Cas put up a lot of fight, he felt they missed a big opportunity to defeat a strong Super League side who were desperate to put their poor form of the previous week behind them.

“Frustrating way to lose but truth be told, our attack was a bit clunky, defence a little off but we worked so hard for each other against a desperate Warrington team who played pretty well and losing a couple of our player didn’t help either. But we just weren’t good enough as the score line showed 9-8 and it’s disappointing.

“We knew it wouldn’t be an easy game with them getting nilled at Leeds they would want to move on but we were the same, we wanted to come into it and perform better than we did last week and I think you had two sides desperate for the two points for different reasons.”

Defensively on their own try line the Fords held firm on many occasions to deny the hosts a game winning score, and being down on troops off the bench meant they showed real resolve in the match.

“The way we hung in there is a massive positive because there was periods of the game where it would be easy to die out with the injuries sustained. Losing Pete and then Millo only coming back on because we had no-one else before losing Oggy for the final 15 or so, we had to reshuffle and it put us under the pump.

“The way all the boys came together to defend our line how often we did was terrific and made it more heartbreaking going one point down with a minute to go. It’s a tight game and these tight games are the ones we need to come away with victories in and we’ll learn from our mistakes and next time hopefully we’ll come away with the win.”

JOIN US AT THE JUNGLE for Castleford vs St Helens on Sunday, 15th March – kickoff at 3.30pm, tickets are available anytime, online or head into our retail stores!