Castleford Tigers coach Craig Lingard pleased with impact of new boys

The Tigers ran in seven tries in a comprehensive victory and also produced a strong defensive display to prevent their opponents from scoring in the 80 minutes.

Cas now go to Leigh Leopards this Saturday, level on points with last year’s Challenge Cup winners and hoping to look upwards in the table.

"I’m obviously really pleased,” said head coach Lingard. "It was a potential banana skin game that we could have quite easily slipped up.

"I’m pleased we didn’t come into it with any apprehension. The guys were confident and I think we prepped really well for the threats that London had.

"They’ve got a great kicking game and score a lot of tries off kicks and it sort of worked conversely for us. Because we’ve done a lot of that in training in the week we’ve got better at attacking kicks ourselves and scored a few tries off kicks.

"It was real good to score a lot of points, but I guess for a coach you are always pleased when you don’t concede any.

"The attitude was epitomised by Corey Hall in the corner right at the very end (try saving tackle). It could have been quite easy for him to give up on that, you know what does it matter it’s 40 points to four or six?

"We talked about chasing that zero and keeping a clean sheet and I was really pleased with the effort at the end, it epitomised how it went all through the 80 minutes.”

Lingard believes that the new signings recently brought have given the team a big boost, along with the return to fitness of key experienced players like Paul McShane, Alex Mellor and Joe Westerman

He added: "The new boys were really good. The right edge was great, defensively really good and the back five were outstanding, getting us out of yardage, getting us on the front foot then finishing the tries.

"With the players we’ve brought in and the players who are back now we’ve got a little bit of size, a little bit of presence and some strike on the edges so we are a slightly different proposition than we were two weeks ago.

"The challenge now is to keep everybody fit and fighting for places in the 17.

"We saw it a little bit in training when the new guys came in, it creates that competition and added intensity in training, which is what you want really.

"Previous weeks it’s almost been a case of if you’re fit you might be playing and we don’t want that – we want competition for places, we want 24 or 25 people competing for 17 places.”