CATALANS DRAGONS demolished Castleford Tigers 26-4 at The Jungle this afternoon in a comprehensive performance.
The Dragons dominated for most of the 80 minutes, leading 14-0 at half-time before adding a further two tries to make sure of victory.
And after the pressure had been mounting on head coach Steve McNamara, he was a relieved man to say the least.
“It was as heavy rain as I’ve seen in a game and it was consistent throughout the game. You just had to find field position and points and get in front on the scoreboard,” McNamara said.
“Thankfully it was us that did that and we managed to do that early on in the game. We had to change our plan, it was nearly impossible to do anything.
“I thought with the conditions it was actually a reasonable game. The plan had to be changed and I thought our experienced players were able to do that.”
McNamara also hailed Sam Tomkins on his first Super League appearance of the season.
“It’s his first Super League game of the season so we have missed him. We trained most of pre-season with him at fullback and Luke Keary and Arthur Mourgue in the halves.
“Guillermo has been out 12 weeks, he broke his scaphoid. He wasn’t an option earlier in the season.
“He is a good player, he played in the French academy team that beat England. He got a chance today and I thought he did extremely well.”
Despite the victory, Catalans suffered two injury blows.
“We’ve picked up a couple of injuries. Romain Navarrete has broken his cheekbone and Fouad Yaha has done his hamstring so we will need to change things up again next week.”
With Guillermo Aispiro-Bichet stepping into Arthur Mourgue’s shoes, the Catalans boss spoke highly of the teenager and the young potential in the Dragons’ side.
“For the first in a while I’m really excited about the prospect of some of our young French backs.
“We have generated forwards and we have a lot of those in our team with Julian Bousquet, Paul Seguier, Jordan Dezaria and Ben Garcia.
“But in terms of halves and outside backs, we’ve got a few coming through.”
