STEVE MCNAMARA has revealed that a failure to prepare for the future cost him his job at the Catalans Dragons in 2025.

McNamara was sacked as Catalans boss earlier this year after a dreadful run of form that saw them slip out of the play-offs and towards the bottom half of the Super League table.

After winning the Challenge Cup with the Dragons in 2018 before making it two Super League Grand Finals, it was a sad end for a man that had given so much to the French club’s cause.

But now McNamara has explained just what went wrong.

“From the 2023 Grand final, the second Grand Final in three years, I was blinkered in trying to win the competition,” McNamara told the League Express podcast.

“My focus was on that but what was happening in the background, there were lots of players going. Look at the Grand Final team from that year.

“Sam Tomkins was retiring, Tom Johnstone and Tom Davies were leaving but should have been tied down to three-year deals, Adam Keighran was leaving for Wigan, Tyrone May to Hull KR, Mitchell Pearce was retiring and Matt Whitley went to St Helens.

“We should have been thinking about what comes next, how that develops and what are our junior pathways.

“It’s not sometimes recruitment of players, it’s sometimes about the retention of your players because that’s almost all of the Grand Final team departing in one.

“I took responsibility for that as coach because I was hellbent on wanting to win that Grand Final but as a club we took our eyes off what comes next.

“People behind the scenes also left, two assistant coaches left in Sam Moa and Eamon O’Carroll.

“In a nutshell, we didn’t prepare for it and we made a mistake there. It wasn’t my sole responsibility but I take my fair share of it.

“I do think we should have done things better but the decision was made and I have no regrets.

“We tried to bring in experience for 2025 after losing so much of that in 2023 but that didn’t work.”