Castleford Tigers boss Andy Last warns his players 'there's work to do' in international break

This week's international break has come at a good time for Last as he aims to get working on smoothing out the errors that are continuing to cost the Tigers points and have left them second from bottom after just two wins from the first 10 Betfred Super League games.

But there will not be much time off for the players as Last explained: “We’ve only given the players Friday, Saturday and Sunday off because they’ve got a little bit of work to do.

"There’s lots of areas that we need to improve and get back to so we’ll be doing that.

"We’ll be looking at our execution and making the right decisions in the pressure moments.

"I gave them a little bit of a dressing down (after last Friday’s 12-7 defeat to Hull KR) around how they scored their points.

"Mentally we're not coming up with the right plays when we're fatigued. We need to show a little bit more mental toughness in those periods and I told the guys that, not in an angry way but a stern way.

"We need to start coming up with the right decisions because it's been the story of our season.

"The case in point was taking the drop kick, not dealing with the kick-off and conceding straight away. You can't do that and have got to be better than that.

“We created some opportunities in the last 15 minutes, but our passing was just off and created a few mistakes. There was a little bit of fatigue, but the best teams nail those opportunities.”

Last is relishing the opportunity he now has as the permanently appointed head coach and believes he is now in a better position to change things.

He said: “The game felt different for me in that my words carried a little bit more weight.

“They know now I am the master of those players’ fate. If they carry on performing poorly and losing then there is every chance I will say they are no longer part of Castleford Tigers.

“May is the contract time and a lot of those players are looking for renewals and looking to be retained. Every time we are getting beat it makes it difficult to keep them.”