Castleford Tigers boss Craig Lingard explains where improvements are needed after pre-season draw with London Broncos

​Cas led 14-6 at half-time, but failed to kick on after the break when they did not add another point to their tally and were guilty of making too many mistakes.

"I’m a bit disappointed,” said Tigers boss Lingard. “It doesn’t matter a great deal score-wise in friendlies, but we’re looking at areas where we want to get better and to improve and I thought we took too many short cuts.

"In the second half our completion rate was way down below 50 per cent, which is something we’ve talked about previously, about completing our sets.

“We’d compound an incomplete set with a penalty and instead of an attacking set on their goal-line we’re back to defending our own goal-line.

"So it’s about getting into that process and I don’t think we were prepared to get into that set for set process to earn reward. We tried to force it too much.

"Certainly on that second half we need to tighten up and play a bit more through the forwards, get through the line and generate a bit more ruck speed rather than looking for the short cuts to try and go out wide. We’ve got to earn the right to score.”

Lingard was happy with the contributions of half-back Danny Richardson, who was back out on the pitch after 18 months out, and young prospect Fletcher Rooney who played the last 23 minutes after coming off the bench for his first experience of senior rugby league.

He added: “I was very pleased with Danny. He was apprehensive, but wanted to stay out there a little bit longer if he could.

"But we’re conscious that it’s been a long time since he played so we took him off after a half-hour and we’ll try to build him up again next week.

"With Rowan (Milnes) coming off injured as well it’s massively important Danny comes through that for the Wigan game (start of Super League).

"I was really pleased with Fletcher. He took a real good kick in that wind, he doesn’t seem to get phased by a great deal.

"He’s been training more with the first team as a prep for this and he’s got a lot more games to come for Castleford.”