Catalans coach Steve McNamara concedes the fight for the Super League top eight is out of their hands as he prepares for his first home game in charge later today.
The Dragons face bottom of the table Leigh knowing that defeat could be a fatal blow in their hopes to avoid a first spell in the Qualifiers later this summer.
And McNamara admits that the Dragons are in this position through nobody’s fault but their own.
“It’s out of our hands, we are where we are,” McNamara said. “We’ve put ourselves in this situation.
“You don’t often change a coach when things are going fantastically well. It’s quite clear we need to improve performances and the league table reflects that.”
McNamara also admits he is keen to see further improvement from his side following what he believed was an encouraging opening display at Warrington last weekend.
He said: “We’ll just concentrate on improving and I think we did that last week. I thought we showed far more resilience at Warrington and I’m looking for more improvement tomorrow.
“If we do that and we’re good enough to get the two points, we’ll move on to the week after.
“The top eight is not in our hands but we’ve enough games, so you never know. If we end up in the other side of the draw, we’ll deal with it.”
Although they were beaten 56-12 in their last match at Stade Gilbert Brutus a fortnight ago, three of the Dragons’ last four games are all in Perpignan.
“Obviously, it’s nice to be at home,” McNamara said. “For us at this stage, we’ve got to perform full stop, whether it’s at home or not, but without the added issue of travel for three of those four games, it is a slight advantage for us.”
