JOEL TOMKINS has called on his Catalans Dragons to find some “personal pride”, including the 14 players who will leave the club at the end of the year.
Catalans slumped to a ninth defeat from ten under his leadership at Huddersfield Giants, with six matches still to go for the strugglers.
“We’re in a rare position of having 14 players leave at the end of the year. We’ve got a lot of new players coming in next year,” said Tomkins.
“We can’t make the play-offs. Our season is dead. But the players have got to find some personal motivation and some personal pride in their own performance.
“That’s my job as a coach to build that, but also individually players have got to want to perform. They’ve got to want to give 100 percent effort. They’ve got to be willing to put their body on the line.”
Tomkins admitted his side were lacking “resilience” and explained: “We have this anxiety within us as a team, because we’ve had so many poor results this year.
“When you look at the scoreboard and it’s 6-0 or 12-0, it’s natural to feel that anxiety and think ‘what if they score another try, this could be an embarrassing result again’.
“It runs all the way from the president, through to me, through to the players. We’re all anxious because we know how much it means to our supporters, our sponsors, that we get some results.
“At the minute we’re just not doing enough good things, not building enough pressure to get the results.
“I thought we started the game really well and for the first 30 minutes we were pretty dominant. We just have no resilience.
“We gave them two seven-tackle sets and the momentum changes. They scored a try off a scrum which is an individual, defensive error from (Arthur) Romano.
“As soon as we go behind on the scoreboard, we struggle mentally to stick to our game plan.
“We had a go in the second half, built some pressure and got back to 12-6. Then there’s a call to give a penalty under the posts for offside.
“If you go back and freeze-frame it, it’s not offside. It’s frustrating because that gives them an eight-point lead and the game is pretty much gone.”
Tomkins had no issue with Bayley Sironen’s first-half yellow card for a high tackle but was unhappy with the way it was awarded, after Huddersfield’s Oliver Wilson started a scuffle which got play stopped.
The Catalans coach said: “The referee doesn’t even give a penalty. It obviously is a high tackle, but what about Wilson flying in?
“Do I tell my players next time there’s a high tackle just fly in and you’ll get a sin bin? When a Huddersfield player flies in 15 metres away, are there no repercussions for that?
“If you’re not penalising that then in future you’ll get other players doing that. I’ve no qualms with the sin bin but the way it came about probably needs looking at.”