Castleford Tigers took on Wigan in the Super 8’s last night scoring an important victory
Castleford Tigers 36-22 Wigan Warriors – Denny Solomona reached 31 tries for the season with a hat-trick as Castleford Tigers kept alive their dream of a First Utility Super League top-four finish by beating second-placed Wigan Warriors 36-22 at the Mend-a-Hose Jungle.
The league’s top try-scorer was clinical as the Tigers claimed their first in four attempts against the Warriors this season, backing up their stunning win at league leaders Hull and leaving Wigan two points adrift of the summit with five games to play.
The Tigers, unchanged from the side triumphant at the KC Stadium, held a deserved 12-6 lead at half-time, courtesy of tries from Solomona and Paul McShane, with Sam Powell replying for Wigan.
Two further scores from Kiwi Solomona plus late tries from Ryan Hampshire and Oliver Holmes – who was later shown a yellow card – clinched the victory, while Ben Flower, John Bateman and Lee Mossop scored for the visitors who at one stage looked set to set up a tense finish.
Luke Gale finished with six goals for the home side and Matty Smith added three for the visitors.
After the game, Tigers coach Daryl Powell praised the character of his side. He said: “That’s a big win for us and for a large part of the game we were excellent.
“When Ogi (Oliver Holmes) got sin-binned we got rattled a bit – they got a couple of tries and we were creaking but there was some really desperate defence and we held on.
“We’ve changed our mentality since the Warrington game when we were 18-16 up at half-time and ended up losing because we were blown apart in the second half.
“We talked about that afterwards and made some changes. We can clearly score points but it’s evident that we have to defend better and I was really pleased as, although we conceded 22 points, I thought we were fantastic in defence for large periods.”
Shaun Wane added: “We could have (won the game)- we didn’t play that well but still had times where we could have nicked it.
“Our defence started soft but we gripped the game after half-time and went at Castleford but they deserved the win – they were the best team.”