Catalans Dragons looked set to lose their eighth straight away defeat when substitute Franck Maria was sent off for a high tackle on Emmanuel Waine. However, an Ugo Tison drop-goal late on sealed the win.
“In the first half we were disgraceful,” admitted Tomkins. “Some of our actions were embarrassingly bad.
“There are loads of excuses we can use… we had a load of players injured but it doesn’t really matter what team you turn out. It is up to you how hard you hit and how committed you are to the cause. We just weren’t there.”
The Dragons improved their discipline in the second half and began shifting momentum, though frequent turnovers in the final third, something Tomkins is working to fix, hindered them.
“We are training hard, but the fact is we are struggling for that little bit of magic,” he said.
“When you need somebody to do something out of the ordinary or a bit special to score a try, we probably haven’t got it.”
“We are very connected as a team and that is a mad thing to say about a bunch of lads that have just come together in the last two weeks,” he said.
“We were unfortunate with our two disallowed tries but that is how the cookie crumbled.
“Defensively, we were too passive, and we went off-script offensively as well. It has been an achilles heel of Salford over the last few years, every time a team goes down to 12, we seem to go off script when it should be a whole lot simpler.”