CATALANS DRAGONS interim coach Joel Tomkins described their 0-34 home defeat to Hull FC as “embarrassing”.
It was a third blank in succession after conceding 40 points to St Helens – Steve McNamara’s final game in charge – and then 48 to Wigan Warriors.
Tomkins said: “That was pretty embarrassing really for us as a club, no more so than for the players.
“I’ve just spoken to them and I said I’m disappointed and embarrassed but the players themselves feel it more. They don’t need telling.
“We had a good week in training. It was all going in the right direction and I still think it was a good week where we made improvements, but that was a reality check tonight.
“It’s clear that we have some serious work to do if we want to salvage our season.
“Hopefully this is rock bottom for us now and we have a big week next week at training and hopefully go to Hull KR and do a job.
“That could be the turning point for our season but we were really disappointing tonight.
“We’re not scoring points because we don’t have the ball for long enough. As soon as we get into an arm-wrestle we make errors and we’re the team that cracks every week.
“We drop too many balls, we give too many penalties away and it’s something we need to work on going forward.
“We’re doing more defending than the opposition and we’re getting fatigued. Will Pryce is a great player and we didn’t handle him well enough.
“Do I think we can play a lot better? Yes, and we’ll get a number of players back after the Challenge Cup weekend.
“Tevita Pangai Jr is one of them, Julian Bousquet and Sam Tomkins too, and there will be players tonight who won’t play in the next game.
“That is the only way we can move forward. We will pick our team on form, not status. We’ve got a good enough squad to be in the play-offs this year.
“I think Hull KR and Wigan are streets ahead of everyone at the minute but after that I think we’re good enough to be in the top six.
“We’re lacking confidence, that is the number one thing you need in sport for me and you can see that Hull came here with confidence under a very good coach who instils that confidence in them.
“That’s something that I will look to do now, as the head coach of this group, and go into the Hull KR game with confidence.”
