Saturday 13 August 2016 13:45, UK
Daryl Powell stressed that hat-trick hero Denny Solomona was more than just a prolific tryscorer after his latest treble helped Castleford back up victory over league leaders Hull with a hard-earned 36-22 win against second-placed Wigan.
New Zealand winger Solomona took his season's tally to 31 by putting the Tigers ahead in the first half and then adding two more touchdowns after the break.
Wigan hit back from 26-12 down to close within four points of their hosts but late tries from Ryan Hampshire and Oliver Holmes sealed Cas' first victory over the Warriors in four attempts this season.
Powell said: "That's a big win for us and for a large part of the game we were excellent.
"When Ogi (Oliver Holmes) got sin-binned we got rattled a bit - they got a couple of tries and we were creaking but there was some really desperate defence and we held on.
"We've changed our mentality since the Warrington game when we were 18-16 up at half-time and ended up losing because we were blown apart in the second half.
"We talked about that afterwards and made some changes. We can clearly score points but it's evident that we have to defend better and I was really pleased as, although we conceded 22 points, I thought we were fantastic in defence for large periods."
On Solomona, Powell added: "I thought his all-round game was superb - generally when you talk about Denny you speak about tryscoring but I thought he showed he really wanted to win that game.
"His work in back field, bringing the ball off our tryline was outstanding and he was really tough in everything he did... and obviously his try scoring is particularly good."
Castleford, fielding an unchanged side for the first time this season, still have only faint hopes of making the end-of-season play-offs but have to rely on others losing and Powell explained: "We can't have an impact on what anybody
else does except when we play them so we must concentrate on trying to win games.
"We lost Lee Jewitt today (to a knee ligament injury) so we'll have to make some changes next week (away at Warrington)."
Despite losing skipper Sean O'Loughlin with a slight hamstring strain the day before the game and then winger Dom Manfredi in the opening 10 minutes, Wigan boss Shaun Wane felt they might still have come away with a win.
Wane said: "We could have - we didn't play that well but still had times where we could have nicked it.
"Our defence started soft but we gripped the game after half-time and went at Castleford but they deserved the win - they were the best team.
"Both teams want to finish the season off strong but we need to be a lot smarter and start games better. There are lessons to be learned before next week's game against St Helens - that's a big game."
Manfredi was knocked out and helped from the pitch with an anterior cruciate ligament injury which Wane says will need a scan.
