Castleford head coach Craig Lingard expressed relief after his side survived a late onslaught from Hull FC to hold on for a 30-22 Betfred Super League win at The Jungle.
Boosted by a try and a clean slate of five conversions from Rowan Milnes, the hosts looked to be soaring to a rare victory before late tries from Tiaki Chan and Jake Trueman set the stage for a nervous final quarter of an hour.
“You’ve got to enjoy these nights but you’ve got to make sure you don’t get carried away, because it’s just one victory,” said Lingard. “We are a long way from the finished article, but after the abysmal second half performance against St Helens, to come back and win a game like that is a good thing.”
Lingard admitted he felt “twitchy” during the final stages when some of his stand-out performers, including Milnes and Liam Horne, who scored the first try and excelled in his rare starting berth at number nine, began suffering from sickness.
“There’s three or four guys who’ve had illness today, and fatigue started to have an impact,” added Lingard. “Horney and Rowan were two of those complaining in the last couple of minutes that they were feeling a bit sick, but they had to hold it in. The message today was to be boring. We gifted Hull two tries and it was frustrating to go in at half-time only eight points up, because I thought we’d managed the game really well.
“We’re still learning. We seem to be having two weeks when we’re really good and two when we’re not, but we’re taking these little steps forward, and next week at Leeds is another of those tests for us.”
