For the first 40 minutes, Wigan looked exactly like a team that had spent the last week celebrating a Challenge Cup win, but the second half was a completely different story.
Having led 12-0 after 24 minutes, Castleford lost control of the game and Wigan ran on six unanswered tries to condemn the host to a second successive loss.
Second row Kenny Edwards could keep his head up, but Castleford was badly outplayed in the second half.
In front of a crowd of 6,497, the prolific Greg Eden returned to the Tigers side for the first time since their Easter victory over Wakefield Trinity and was immediately back between tries, opening the scoring after six minutes.
The fit winger galloped back untouched by Jake Truman’s long pass in the set after Bevan French spilled a kick from Gareth O’Brien.
O’Brien converted but missed with a relatively easy penalty attempt after Wigan was caught offside 12 minutes later.
Edwards shrugged off a lukewarm Wigan defense to score the Tigers’ second try in the 24th minute, bettered by O’Brien who didn’t appear in the second half, but Cas had nothing to celebrate after that.
Liam Marshall, whose late attempt won the Cup final, got over the line twice thanks to French passes.
The first was advanced, but the second -in the 33rd minute- broke the visiting duck, although he did not convert.
That came against 12 men, moments after Mahe Fonua was called for kicking Liam Farrell.
The Tigers’ eight-point interval lead turned into a four-point deficit nine minutes after the restart.
Wigan scored a brilliant try five minutes into the second period, keeping the ball alive in the last before French ran to score on an impromptu shot from Marshall.
Abbas Miski crossed moments later, though Farrell’s final pass was iffy, and Harry Smith improved both attempts to give the visitors a 16-12 lead.
Wigan added four more points in the 54th minute when Marshall crossed for his second attempt, following a long pass from French.
At this stage, Wigan was running with the ragged Tigers and they added a fifth touchdown with 18 minutes to go, again in the last, when Jake Bibby got ahead of a Smith pass whose conversion made it 26-12.
The Tigers had a brief spell of pressure late on, Derrell Olpherts and Trueman coming close, but Wigan had the last laugh when Farrell stepped in in the 78th minute and Smith’s fourth goal completed the scoring.
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Source: www.yorkshirepost.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-06-04 16:54:23
