Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard: Belief is growing that we are good enough to challenge

Although they have lost their last two matches at home to Wigan Warriors and Hull KR they were only by narrow margins and the Tigers have been able to take plenty of positives from displays against top four teams in the Betfred Super League.

"We've effectively lost two games so some people would say that you might as well lose by 50 points as opposed to a point or two points,” said Lingard.

"But for us as a team, losing these two close games has given us the belief that we are good enough to challenge when we're on it.

"We've played against Wigan and Hull KR – two of the form teams who will probably end up in the top four at the end of the season – and we've lost two games with a points difference of minus three.

"To have that belief and knowledge that we are good enough to challenge, 100 per cent there are more positives than negatives.

"The challenge is to be consistent and do it week in, week out now and turn some of these close losses into wins."

Lingard believes the experience gained by his players this year will stand them in good stead for next season.

He explained: We said at the start of the season that this was always going to be a journey.

"We signed a lot of people who were inexperienced in Super League. A lot of them hadn't played a lot of games at this level and some had played zero.

"We knew there were going to be periods in this season where we were going to get beat – and were going to get beat bad.

"It's about learning from those defeats and blooding these people. We're not writing the second half of the season off, but these players that are playing now are going to be better next season.

"It's getting these people in a position to play regular games week in, week out and deal with the training three or four times a week and back it up week after week.

"We're getting to points in games where we're challenging top teams. That's certainly better than where we were at the start of the season."

The international break ahead gives Lingard more time to work with the players before they resume action at St Helens.

After being on the wrong end of a heavy defeat to Saints already this year it will be a big test of the Tigers’ new belief and Lingard wants to see the progress followed up on.

He added: "Our challenge this week was to replicate the desire from last week and we did that.

"Our next game is away at the last team that pumped us down here and we’ve got to go replicate it again on their home patch."