LES DRACS are back on track after a hard-fought win at desperate Wakefield Trinity.
Catalans Dragons recovered from two successive defeats with an 18-10 victory over Super League’s bottom side.
A relieved Dragons’ coach Steve McNamara flew home to Perpignan with a crucial two points in his quest to secure a precious home semi-final in the play-offs.
He said after the game; “As I expected, Wakefield played it tough, they were strong and like in many of their games this season they had a lot of pressure and most of the possession when you look at the stats. It didn’t help with our poor completion rate in the second half, we handed over a lot of ball.
“So they came at us hard like you do when you’re fighting for your lives, they made it tough for us but I thin we coped wth it very well until the last five minutes where we conceded a couple of tries.
“Going into the end of season and play-offs, wherever they may be, we need to be feeling confident and there’s a lot, lot more to come from us With two games left now we have an opportunity to get ourselves back into good form.
“We’ve had a dip and I know we can get back to our best by the time we need to.
“There’s a lot this playing group have gone through and the response was good tonight. It wasn’t a complete performance, but I thought we dominated the game and the last five minutes tipped the scoreboard.
“Should we have scored more points? Absolutely, but I think you under-estimate coming here against a team that is so desperate. It was a really hard night to come here and get the win in the circumstances.”
Former Wakefield winger Tom Johnstone opened the scoring, with Adam Keighran and Tom Davies adding touchdowns before a late revival by Trinity who now seem destined for the drop.
McNamara was impressed with Davies’ energy in the game, adding, “Tom had a strong performance for us, he was disappointed with his game at Hull KR the previous week and he responded. His yardage carries and the number of involvements he had, running with strength, was really good for us and he deserved his try.
“It was great all around for us, we’d had a couple of defeats and we needed to get back winning. Wakefield’s always a tough place to go and it was a back-to-back away game so we had to show resilience and toughness and defend a lot better than we had recently and we did so for the majority of the game.”
McNamara will run the rule over French international full-back Arthur Mourgue who failed to return to the pitch in the second-half at Wakefield, with Sam Tomkins switching from the halves.
The coach added, “Arthur felt some pain in his ribs, he was very sore at half-time and very uncomfortable so we had the option with Sam Tomkins to go to full-back so we’ll get Arthur home and see how he is early this week.
“Apart from that there weren’t any major injury concerns from the game as we prepare for what is a very important game against Leeds Rhinos on Saturday.”
