JOEL TOMKINS said he was blindsided by the performance of his Catalans Dragons in a disappointing 28-10 defeat at Bradford Bulls.
“I’m unbelievably disappointed and I didn’t see it coming,” said the Catalans coach.
“We came really confident in what we have done in pre-season, the way we had performed in the trial game, the Challenge Cup and last week (beating Huddersfield Giants) and turned up expecting to be ten times better than we were.
“I thought we started okay and for the first five minutes we went set-for-set but then it just unravelled.
“I thought we got some tough calls but the referee has go a tough job and when we play away and haven’t got any fans in the ground we are probably going to lose those 50-50 calls.
“We didn’t react well to those and probably played a bit soft.
“Bradford played like a team who were desperate for those points… and we weren’t.
“Don’t take anything away from them – I thought they out-played us and were smarter.”