Castleford Tigers boss: We need to get up for Salford challenge

Although the Tigers went down to their sixth defeat of the season they produced one of their best performances in the first half and were only let down by an inability to turn pressure into points.

Dominant down the middle with a strong kicking game off the back of that, Cas forced five goalline drop-outs and were left wondering exactly how the game remained scoreless to half-time.

Although the second half was not so impressive Lingard found plenty of reasons to suggest that his team can turn their fortunes around, but wants the same attitude from the start of the Rhinos game to be on show for the visit of Salford this Friday.

He said: “The challenge for us as a group is to get up for Salford at home this week as much as we did for Leeds at home in the first half.

"That’s what we’ve got to do every single game. Just because it’s a derby and we raised our levels of intensity, concentration, attitude and whatever else you want to chuck into that basket you’ve got to make sure that we do it for Salford. It’s an equaly important game.

"We’re still searching for that first league victory and I think if we come up with the same attitude and application that we came up with (against Leeds) and improve our execution then we might be sat here with a different story.

"But we’ve got to make sure we nail all aspects of the game.”

Lingard singled out several players for praise for their efforts against the Rhinos.

He added: “I thought the starting middles were relaly good. We went with experience to give stability to get us into the game and George Lawler and Liam Watts in partiuclar throughout the first half were excellent.

"Macca (Paul McShane) and Westy (Joe Westerman) put in a shift for us and led us really well.

"I thought our middle unit were really good and dominant in that first half.

"Josh Hodson did all right on his Super League debut. No glaring errors.

"It’s a learning curve with these players and some are learning faster than others.”