Huddersfield head coach Simon Woolford felt the Giants ran out of energy in the closing stages of their 44-12 defeat at Castleford Tigers.

The Australian believes the heavy amount of defending the Giants had to do in the closing stages of the first half eventually took it’s toll.

The Claret and Gold made a dream start with early tries from Adam O’Brien and Lee Gaskell , but they collapsed alarmingly in the second half, conceding five tries in the last 23 minutes to suffer a third successive defeat.

“I thought we started the game reasonably well and midway through the first half we were well and truly in the arm wrestle,” said Woolford, whose side will be without medial knee ligament injury victim Jordan Turner when they return to action against Wigan next Thursday night.

“But we gave them too much ball and it took a lot of gas out of us.

“Late in the game we were out of energy and made some errors coming out of our own end trying to play catch-up.

“At the moment we’re a tired footy team, there’s not much petrol left in the tank.

“We’ve been up for a long time and won a lot of must-win games, but now we’re mentally shot.

“It still doesn’t excuse a team having put 40 points on you and we’ve got to make sure we’re up for the last two games.”

Castleford coach Daryl Powell says his side are in the perfect place to launch their bid for a maiden Super League title.

The Tigers came from 12-4 down to beat the Giants, scoring 40 points without reply to make it four wins in a row and move to within a point of second-placed Wigan.

“I thought we were really good, particularly with the way we’re defending at the moment,” Powell said. “We conceded a couple of soft ones at the start but after that we defended well.

“Over the last month I think we’ve conceded 10 and a half points a game which is really good.

“We’ve got a lot of players playing really well at the moment and as a team we’re just getting better.

“Huddersfield are very good how they defend and it took us a while to break them down. I think that patient side of our game is really going to help us.”

Powell hailed the performance of second rower Junior Moors, who scored two of the Tigers’ eight tries, while Greg Eden, Jake Webster, James Clare, Mike McMeeken and Peter Mata’utia also touched down, with Paul McShane kicking six goals from seven attempts.

The win keeps alive Castleford’s chances of a home semi-final but Powell says he would not mind an away game as they set their sights on going one better than their runners-up spot in 2017.

“We’re ticking along nicely,” he said. “I don’t think it really matters whether we’re away or at home, if we continue in this form we’ll take some beating.

“We feel we’ve got everything needed at the moment, we have to bring it all together on game night when it really matters.

Leroy Cudjoe missed the match at Cas but could be back next week

“I can see different bits of our game in each performance that are being pieced together. To me it’s the perfect set-up where we’re at.”

Powell welcomed back centre Greg Minikin and forward Jesse Sene-Lefao from injury and expects to have scrum-half Luke Gale back for the derby with Wakefield next week.

The England scrum-half recently made his comeback from a fractured kneecap and was left out against the Giants as a precaution.

“He shouldn’t have played last week,” Powell said. “He’s been out so long and we’ve been training pretty hard, he found it real difficult.

“He had a bit of strain in his side before the Hull game so we left him out tonight. Hopefully he’ll be right for next week.”