It was the victory that mattered, not the opponent, says Castleford Tigers coach Lee Radford. Yorkshire News

After three successive losses, the Tigres came to prominence in the Super League with a 33-26 home victory over their previous club in an 11-try thriller.

The Tigers broke their Super League duck six days before the second anniversary of Radford’s sacking by Hull, but he insisted he would rather have hit the mark in the first round, emphasizing: “Only the win was important.

“It wasn’t more special, it was special to get a win after three, four, weeks of hard work.”

Castleford took the lead with a try within the first 10 seconds and was never far behind.

They were without former Hull men Bureta Faraimo and Liam Watts due to suspension and Niall Evalds was ruled out before the match with a hamstring injury.

Radford said: “The shape of the result was also important to us.

“We took a couple of uppercuts from the disciplinary on Monday and had a couple of hamstring pulls in practice, but the determination was there to see.

“We have been fantastic this week and today was the end result of that. There were some special efforts in a game that could have gone either way.”

Hull manager Brett Hodgson had no complaints about the result.

He said, “If you don’t have the right attitude, you don’t get the victory. Fair play to Cas, they showed up ready to play and we just weren’t good enough.”