{"id":720206,"date":"2026-07-31T03:16:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T03:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720206\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T03:16:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T03:16:27","slug":"castleford-tigers-boss-fires-clear-mentality-message-amid-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720206\/","title":{"rendered":"Castleford Tigers boss fires clear ‘mentality’ message amid struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Castleford Tigers<\/a> boss Ryan Carr says the club\u2019s \u2018mentality\u2019 must change, but admits making that happen is tough with his hands largely tied on squad selection.<\/p>\n

Appointed ahead of the 2026 campaign, Carr\u2019s first year in charge at The Jungle has been a difficult one thus far, with his side sat tenth on the Super League ladder.<\/p>\n

The Tigers have won only one of their last five games, being beaten by rivals Wakefield twice during that sequence including last weekend at Belle Vue: where Trinity were down to 12 men just 22 minutes in but still ended up very comfortable 52-14 victors.<\/p>\n

This weekend, Cas return home, with play-off hopefuls Warrington Wolves the visitors.<\/p>\n

And ahead of that clash, Carr has sent a strong message to his squad.<\/p>\n

\u2018We try to work hard with those individuals but it\u2019s hard when you can\u2019t just go, \u2018you\u2019re out, you\u2019re in\u2019\u2026 it was a never-ending cycle\u2019<\/p>\n

The Australian undertook pre-match media duties on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the clash with Warrington.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe know internally what we need to fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a collective thing. If we turned up and didn\u2019t start as we did against them (Wakefield), up 10-6 early playing some really good footy on the back of a really tough game, it\u2019d be a collective thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our preparation hasn\u2019t changed once, that detail hasn\u2019t changed once, it\u2019s probably just the games where we\u2019ve had some bad losses, we\u2019ve been pretty banged up during those games and people have moved around within those games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an excuse, it\u2019s just the reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to work hard with those individuals but it\u2019s hard when you can\u2019t just go, \u2018you\u2019re out, you\u2019re in\u2019. You\u2019ve got to work the best you can as a group to get our mentality right.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the biggest catalyst is that when momentum has been against us, we haven\u2019t been able to stop it and swing it back in our favour in some games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you can\u2019t touch the ball, you\u2019re never going to win. We had 35% possession, which is the lowest I\u2019ve ever seen\u2026 it\u2019s the lowest in Super League this year, that\u2019s why we didn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to fight hard enough to get the ball back. It was a never-ending cycle. We\u2019ve addressed why and worked hard on trying to correct that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You want to win everything, I want to win everything I do, that\u2019s what competitors do. But you can only do your best in the given situation\u2019<\/p>\n

Carr has made no secret throughout the season that the Tigers are in for a fairly sizeable rebuild ahead of 2027, with a number of NRL recruits already official alongside the signing of front-rower Robbie Mulhern from Leigh Leopards.<\/p>\n

For now, he will have to continue managing expectations, but wants those expectations to increase from the level they sit at currently.<\/p>\n

The 37-year-old explained: \u201d There\u2019s a plan in place, and while we\u2019re not looking too far ahead, there\u2019s a long-term plan and a short-term plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes they don\u2019t always go to plan, but sometimes all you can do is do what you can to stick to that plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a great board here and a great owner in Martin (Jepson), they give us their full backing. The alignment is really strong. but we\u2019ve got to make sure we stay on track.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to win everything, I want to win everything I do, that\u2019s what competitors do.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you can only do your best in the given situation. We\u2019re going to do our best on Saturday and there\u2019s nothing to say we don\u2019t want to win that, of course we want to win\u2026 we expect ourselves to win and we\u2019ve got to.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working hard to change expectations as a club\u2026 instead of just being okay with something, we expect to be the absolute best version of ourselves every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH THE NEW EPISODE OF THE LRL PODCAST!<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Castleford Tigers boss Ryan Carr says the club\u2019s \u2018mentality\u2019 must change, but admits making that happen is tough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-720206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}