Castle tackles cheating claims

Ben Castle is too smart to believe everything he reads in the newspaper, but the Steamers prop admits allegations of cheating against Canterbury really got under his skin.
Canterbury assistant coach Rob Penney tried to rub more salt into stinging Steamers' wounds when he accused Castle of boring in at scrum time during Saturday's 40-13 Bay loss in Christchurch.
Penney was frustrated by referee Lyndon Bray's interpretations, after Canterbury's All Black frontrow of Greg Somerville, Corey Flynn and Campbell Johnstone conceded a string of penalties.
"We know Ben Castle has habitual problems coming in on the angle when the pressure comes on," Penney said after the match.
"It is something we are continually having to work with referees and educate them about."
Castle is highly ranked among tighthead props in New Zealand, making the New Zealand Juniors side this year and touring Australia.
He's also got a double university degree, and if they gave out credits for scrummaging theory, it would form part of his doctorate. Penney's thoughts, Castle said, were worth exactly that.
"Rob Penney must be a bit agitated about the penalty count they got," Castle said. "You can't really read too much into it.
"They said they'd worked out tactics to counter me - the funny thing is before we'd gone down there, our scrum had targeted Greg Somerville. I had a yarn to Greg after the game and we were both pretty sore.
"He obviously had a bigger smile than me due to the result but we both admitted it was a good battle out there."
Somerville was playing on his less-favoured loosehead side and Castle explained it was a common tactic to exploit players who switched from tighthead to loosehead by pushing them away on the weaker side and attacking the hooker.
Somerville swung away a couple of times and conceded penalties, which the Bay frontrow of Castle, hooker Aleki Lutui and loosehead Simms Davison wore like badges of honour.
"Canterbury obviously came up with a plan to counter that and it didn't quite work so they've come up with an excuse. It was frustrating to read that in the paper, to see that `Castle has a habitual problem' of going in under pressure."
It's also clearly untrue.
In Bay of Plenty's two losses this season, about the only thing going right for the team is their set-pieces. The scrums have been rock-solid against two of the best packs in the country, Otago and Canterbury.
Now all they have to do, Castle believes, is transfer their set-piece power around the field and they'll get their first win of the season against Taranaki at Blue Chip Stadium on Sunday.
"Taranaki love the close exchanges. They love the ruck, they love the mauling. That's how they get into games. They've been a strong scrum over a number of years but we back ourselves at scrum time and we've come up against two pretty good packs so far," Castle says.
Taranaki got their season started courtesy of a 32-8 win over Northland on Saturday. Last year, they hammered the Ranfurly Shield-holding Steamers 58-14 in New Plymouth. They travel north to Tauranga with improving news on the injury front. Hurricanes loose forward Chris Masoe, big No 8 Tomasi Soqeta and Chiefs winger Sailosi Tagicakibau are all available.
Two players ruled out of Sunday's game are midfielder Mark Stewart and loose forward Brendon McGlashan, both with knee injuries.
"Having Chris back is a big plus. He's had a great season. His all-round play is outstanding and we welcome him back," coach Kieran Crowley said.
"We'll have to make a call on Tomasi. He's had limited rugby since the game against the Lions. Sailosi is 100 per cent. He's a class winger and showed that with the Chiefs. He's raring to get back into it."