AN early sin-binning and injury proved costly to Wolves as they lost 36-16 at Castleford Tigers.

The Wire, missing 10 players through injury and two more out on loan, went 20-0 down inside 23 minutes while skipper Chris Hill was off the field for a late tackle on Cas playmaker Luke Gale, shortly after recalled centre Matty Blythe was carried off with a knee injury.

Later Tom Lineham was sin-binned too although Wolves survived that 10-minutes spell in a second half in which the scoring was 10-10.

Greg Eden was the man to cash in for Cas, scoring five tries on the left wing.

Tony Smith, Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby, said: “Going behind 20-0 in the opening quarter made it hard to win the game.

“Playing 20 minutes down to 12 men, it could have got worse than it did.

“There was a fair bit of damage done in that first 10 minutes down to 12. The captain, Chris Hill, was pretty hard on himself in the changing rooms after the game.

“We still shouldn't have leaked as many points as we did in that period of time, so that's disappointing.

“You don't want to play 20 minutes of rugby league against the best scoring team in the competition at the moment, and they are a terrfic attacking team. I thought Ben Roberts was fantastic for them and orchestrated most of it for them.”

Smith felt his men, who trailed 26-6 at the break, showed a spirit in the second half that gives Wolves some hope for the rest of a season in which they are battling to avoid a Middle 8s place in the second phase of the competition.

They are currently 10th, two points off eighth-placed Huddersfield who have a game in hand.

“To fight back and show a bit about ourselves, even at half time, with the response in the second half it showed some character particularly with troops down.

“Maybe seven or eight of our injured you'd suggest would be in our starting team.

“So, bearing those two things in mind, there was a bit about us today.

“We needed to improve in many areas (from last week) and we showed some improvement.

“I don't think we attacked too bad. We found it pretty easy to get up the field, get out of our own area pretty well.

“Last plays probably let us down a fair bit.

“We scored some tries and although Cas are a very good attacking team at the moment I'm not convinced about all aspects of them in defence.

“But they can certainly rack up points on you if your defence is no good and ours wasn't today at certain stages.”