Mark Applegarth vows that Wakefield Trinity will fight on until it's mathematically impossible

​The hugely disappointing result in the relegation four-pointer left Trinity two points behind the Tigers with an inferior points difference as well and makes the fight that bit harder.

But Applegarth is certainly not thinking of throwing in the towel having already overseen a mid-season revival when many had written his side off for 2023.

He said: "It’s not over yet. It’s obviously given Castleford a bit of wind between the sails, but there’s five games to go yet and we definitely won’t be giving up.

"We’re confident (on escaping the drop). We’ve been six points behind before and we still have faith in ourselves – that’s not changed.

"Obviously we’d like to be on the other end of the result, but one thing I do know about the group is that they won’t be giving in until it’s mathematically impossible.

“It hurts, but we’ll speak about the togetherness we showed when we were six behind and we'll dig into that and come back all guns blazing against Salford on Friday.

"It does sting, but both teams will be going at it until it’s mathematically impossible.”

Applegarth had no complaints over the result nor the bad luck that saw a try controversially chalked off in the first half.

He added: “I thought we had our chances to win it, but Castleford probably handled it better in the 80 minutes. They took their chances when they got them.

“In the second half we were chasing the game a little and our last passes weren't sticking.

"Cas were more clinical for that 80 minutes, but we're not giving up hope, there's still a lot of rugby to be played.

"You’ve just got to focus on the next week. You can’t afford to get too caught up in it all – you’ve got to go right this is where we need to improve and onto the next one and keep that togetherness.

"We had enough opportunities to win and we obviously didn’t take them. We need to address that first and foremost then we’ll go from there.”