Catalans coach Steve McNamara doesn’t care whether his team wins good, bad or ugly, but he is delighted with five wins from six so far this season.
The Dragons continued their winning run with a hard-fought 18-10 victory over Hull KR in Perpignan on Friday night and McNamara was pleased his team was pushed all the way for the points.
He told League Express: “It was a full-on tough game.
“Winning 28-0 against Wigan last week was great; everyone goes away feeling fluffy and happy and tonight everyone’s feeling the opposite way.
“But that’s what the game’s about, dealing with these situations. Of course you want to go out and play ten out of ten every week but we’re more realistic than that.
“We underperformed tonight but I’m happy with the type of game that we were put into. We had to fight to win.
“You have to find different ways at different stages of the season.
“We were off the mark tonight; we didn’t play how we have done in the last few weeks but the two points is so important in this early part of the season.”
Catalans travel to Huddersfield Giants next and they will be without Kiwi centre Dean Whare, who left the field early in Friday’s game.
McNamara said, “It looks like he’s torn his pectoral. It’s the opposite one, not the one he tore in last season’s Grand Final, so it’s extremely disappointing for Dean and we will get him checked out as soon as possible to learn the extent of the damage.”
The Dragons’ coach reported no further injury problems from the game, although he will be keeping an eye on the RFL’s Disciplinary this week following a sin-bin for his stand-off Mitchell Pearce.
Referee Tom Grant gave Pearce a yellow card for a dangerous tackle on Rovers’ fullback Will Dagger midway through the first-half.
However, McNamara picked the positives from the penalty situation in the game against Hull KR.
He said, “You’ve got to find a way to win and we did that by kicking penalties tonight.
“It was interesting listening to Danny McGuire on Sky Sports about not kicking penalties but at this stage of the season you need to get that scoreboard moving.
“A conversion is half a try and ultimately we won on penalties, so there were some pretty good calls on the pitch from our players tonight.
“Rovers challenged us, their ruck speed was good after that initial 25 minutes and we didn’t get to grips with them.
“They moved the ball on us at times and caused us trouble, so they gave us different types of challenges today.
“You can’t play the same style against different teams. We’ve developed an uncanny knack of just getting past Hull KR by a few points on a few occasions.
“Thankfully tonight we did it again but it could have gone either way.”
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