Liam Finn

They have had a surprisingly good start to the season and it continued earlier, with the Castleford Tigers defeating Hull KR 30-10, on the back of a stellar performance from halfback Liam Finn.

Finn drew immense praise from Tigers head coach Daryl Powell, as the club made it three wins from three to begin the year to surprise many.

With concerns that life after Rangi Chase would be quite tough, it has been anything but, with Finn the man drawing the most praise from many.

“The biggest question I’ve been asked was where our points were going to come from and I said probably from all over because we’ve a lot of good players,” he said.

“Liam Finn has been an outstanding player in the Championship for a fair while.

“He’s a calm head, he knows where he wants to pick defences off and I think his execution has been excellent.

“His kicking game is pretty tidy and he’s been tough defensively. Everyone has a pop at him but I thought he was great again tonight.

“I thought he (Finn) was unlucky to be sin-binned. I didn’t see an awful lot in that.”

Another player who impressed was Richard Owen, as he nabbed a hat-trick after being given the opportunity to start on the wing ahead of Kirk Dixon.

“Kirk Dixon has been playing really well but we’ve a squad in which some of the players are close to each other in terms of their ability and the form they showed in pre-season,” Powell added.

“I thought Richard deserved an opportunity to play. He played well and I’ve got to pick a team next week. They’re the difficult decisions you want.

“It was a great performance from everyone out there. I thought defensively we were superb. We got put under a lot of pressure.

“I don’t think our game management was the best it could have been but we’ve got a group of people who are working so hard for each other defensively.

“I thought when we got in good field position we looked like we were going to score pretty much every time we got there. We just didn’t get there that often.”

Not one to take anything away from Castleford, Hull KR coach Craig Sandercock praised their efforts but was disappointed at his side’s lack of execution when it mattered.

“Cas were way too good,” he said.”They are playing really good footie.

“We had a lot of opportunities but we keep letting teams off the hook. Our execution is nowhere near where it should be at this time of year.”

Injuries also struck Hull KR to add to their growing injury concerns, with both Jonny Walker and Jamie Langley suffering knee and concussion injuries respectively.

“We thought we had a strong case because straight after the game at Huddersfield he had absolutely no symptoms of concussion,” Sandercock said.

“Hopefully it will be enforced for every other club. I’m really big on player welfare myself. There is no way I’d let one of my players play with the slightest doubt.”

By ricky

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