Castleford Tigers coach tips Leeds Rhinos for top-3: Ryan Carr 'proud' after battling loss

Carr, who had a spell on Rhinos’ backroom staff seven years ago and was an assistant to Leeds boss Brad Arthur at Parramatta Eels, was “proud” of the way Tigers performed in their 22-4 defeat against one of the competition’s form teams. It was Leeds’ third win in four Betfred Super League games this year and they are second in the table, behind Wigan Warriors.

Carr said: “They are a good team and they always play well at home. They are a high-quality outfit and they are going to be in the top two or three come finals time. They are near enough to the benchmark, if not the benchmark, in this competition at the moment.”

Even so, Tigers trailed only 10-4 at the break and Carr insisted: “I felt like we were going to win the game, for sure. We came here to win the game, that was our mentality and belief. We were confident in how we could play against them, but we were disappointed with the two kick tries. That was a let down for me.

“Even after that, a one-on-one miss let us down, but I thought we defended the best we have as a group since we started the journey together this year. I know the scoreboard doesn’t reflect that, but I think we took a lot of massive steps forward in how we defend.”

Tigers were left to rue their inability to deal with high kicks from Man of Steel Jake Connor. Two of Rhinos’ four tries came via that route and Carr admitted that was decisive.

“I am proud of our effort levels,” he said. “We competed extremely hard, it was near enough 60-40 per cent possession in the end, I think we had more line breaks and more post-contact metres so I felt we went after the game, which was really pleasing.

“But I’m frustrated as well for the boys. We spoke a lot about last plays, the ball goes up in the air and it can be a coin flip at times. They are good at it, give them some credit on that, but ultimately that’s the difference in a game like that. You’ve got to be on the right side of the ball when it comes down and we weren’t, twice. That burned us.

“There’s a lot of pleasing parts of that performance, but we can’t be satisfied with it, we need to be better in certain areas. We know that and we are going to continue to work hard.”

Carr paid tribute to veteran Joe Westerman who made his 400th Super League appearance. His father was called in during the week to present a gift on behalf of the club and Carr said: “Being a middle forward, playing 400 games is a massive achievement. I thought he played well again today. There were a lot of good performances from us, but just a couple we need to fix up.”