Ryan Carr said he will wield the axe on members of Castleford Tigers’ squad if they are unable to stop being victims within games.
The Tigers boss was visibly annoyed after his side were thrashed 34-0 by local rivals Wakefield Trinity, in a performance that felt like one step backwards after one forward last week. Castleford beat Bradford last time out, but fell back into old habits here.
It was something that irked Carr, who admitted he is beginning to lose patience.
“The start was exactly how we thought it would be,” Carr said.
“Probably up until the point where Qareqare’s try got disallowed, it felt like that was where we thought the game would be, a close fight and then for whatever reason, momentum swings against us and we’ve just got too many people who become victims in that moment and just feel sorry for themselves and don’t respond well enough.
“It’s concerning that certain individuals can play the way they played ten days ago and then today look like different people out there. So, something that I’ve got to get to the bottom of but obviously, tough day for us as a club in front of a big crowd and we let them down.”
Asked how many performances he could tolerate like that, Carr said: “It’s hard at the moment because we’ve probably been guilty of putting band-aids on things and just trying to cover it up with whatever fix we could get at the minute.
“It’s not like there’s some options there for us in the background, but there aren’t any options in that area. For me, I’m finding out a lot about certain individuals as we go and as we continue to go through this journey as a group, we knew there was going to be some bumps in the road, but I spoke to the team about if it continues to happen, we’ll make changes. We’ll make changes for moving forward.
“I don’t care what people’s contracts are, I’ve just got to make change. I’ll make changes and that’s what I’m here for. It’s not a threat, it’s just the reality of where we’re at as a group.”
That said, Carr admitted that recruiting right now is a challenge given the lack of players on the market.
“It’s hard. We’ve no quotas and obviously every other club’s gone through injuries and things like that.
“We had two loan players playing for us today that are going to go back to their club after today. They’re good kids and they tried really hard. We’re at round seven, probably a bit early to be bringing in loan players, but for whatever reason it is what it is.
“It’s always going to be a tough year because of the change of roster and we’ve got to continue to build that. There’s a lot of work being done in the background on 2027, but we can’t just let this go. We can’t just let today go. Next week and the week after, it’s really important that we go after every game.”
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