If anything, todays game should teach us to see each game as another two points to be won. Not a game where we can rest the likes of westwood and Harrison. We seemed to have the pre match mentality of a game already in the bag.

Dont fix it if it isnt broken,

We rested players against Wakefield and still pulled off a victory.

Today showed that we were still hungover after Wigan. Catalans were by far the better team, showed more enthusiasm in the play and thorougly deserved their victory. And if we'd have snatched it at the end, it would have been very undeserved indeed.

I have mooted that in the past hour. Fully Agree

Lethargic, unenthusiastic, clueless are words that spring to mind about
todays game. After last week's super performance, we looked as if we hadn't played together all season . But then again some of them hadn't really. TS warned about how good Dragons really were, and then rests Westwood and Harrison, two of his best workhorses.
The messing about at the PTB was horrendous, but Bentham obviously felt sorry for the French, and decided to penalise us instead. Waiting till 30 seconds from the end to sin-bin a player for that offence is pathetic.
Overall we were out enthused and didn't deserve to win.

By resting players today has put more pressure on us to win next week.

Its fantastic to see a couple of wire fans with some honesty. I see all the gloating fans from last week are a little quiet.


The title race will have lots of twists and turns yet. I think this is a great reality check for your fans.

I've absolutely no concerns about today's defeat. In fact, losses like today's can often work as an advantage for a coach with regards to motivation.

The biggest test after a defeat like today's comes the following week and the reaction to it....Look how we reacted to our opening day defeat?...6 consecutive victories.

Yes, today is a sore one to take, because on paper its a match we should take a comfortable 2 points, but, unfortunately, sport isn't that predictable.

Ultimately, I'll be more concerned if we got a run of performances like today's going, but, at the moment, we just need to take it on the chin, re-group and come back that little bit stronger.

I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about taking the win for granted etc, but everyone that I know was saying how it was a banana skin. Smith showed complacency by resting players, but even he warned that we would have to be on our toes.

We all knew that over the season there would be fantastic victories and stupid losses. It was a bad day-get over it.

The saving grace is that we didn't drop points against a team competing for the title and our points difference has only decreased by two.

Hopefully it will spur us on for next Friday.

Sorry pal, have to disagree with your first point. I'm concerned. A game like that, top v bottom is one that we should be winning (no offence to the Dragons).

To say that you are not concerned about the defeat is not really giving Catalans much credit, is it? They were the much better team, thoroughly deserved the win and if we'd have got the try right at the death, there was no way we would have deserved the win.

I'd have rather gone to Huddersfield on the back of 7 straight wins, not on the back of a one game losing streak.

I meant that if we are brutally honest we aren't going to get through a season without defeats like today's....We now have to use this loss as a motivating tool and, most importantly, will rid the side of any complacency which inevitably will creep into the squad during a winning streak.

At the end of the season, 1 defeat every 6 or 7 games will probably see us top the table...That's good enough for me.

I see where you are coming from mate, but I'm still disappointed by the result, moreso because of the nature of it. Our best player last week was rested, we looked like we weren't bothered, we were outmuscled and outenthused by the bottom team.

Hudds away is going to be a lot tougher, and I would have preferred to go into that with our unbeaten streak still intact. However, I agree with you about 1 defeat every 6-7 games, that would be great, but I just hope that inconsistensy doesn't start to creep in a lot more now.

We have Crusaders at home in a couple of weeks, if we'd have won today and win next week, I'd look at it as a home banker, but we lost today and if we lose next week, I'll have it in my mindset that Crusaders could take us to the cleaners.

But that is just me.

It's nothing to get upset about.

yes, we were poor..... we rested a few key players AND all the others had an off day.... sometimes it happens. We made mistakes, especially in defence.... plenty of season left.

We have proved we are up there with the best teams in the league when we have a full team.

I think we all got to see a few things today....

1) Grix is nowhere near being a second rower.
2) Blythe is a centre.
3) Clarke is not good enough.
4) Westwood is our best forward.

According to the Guardian it said Ben Harrison has a calf injury

I thought Catalan were awful, constantly lying on, putting hands on the ball at every tackle, ripping balls out yet gaining knock ons.

I'm glad the referees had taken this all on board though and are now penalising the slow scrum formation......that was a real problem in the game wasnt it....?

lets be fair they won the game off the back of our mistakes and the pass to David Ferriol was forward a week....

I fully understand Warrington were the worst of two awful sides, but I thought the referee had a complete shocker and was totally owned by Ian Henderson who must have been laughing his tallywhacker off when being sinbinned with a minute to go....

i said on another thread not to rest any one we was form team and needed to carry this on. hope we learn from this better team won on the day enough said

Summed up the game perfectly.

Resting players had nothing to do with losing today. The team out there today had the ability to win but we were out-enthused and out-thought by Catalans.

We also made some silly errors with ball in hand and the key poor decision was the kick that Myler (not blaming him) palmed back for Dureau to score. Instead of a high kick into the wind that went nowhere, it should have been drilled into the corner for them to do the hard work - a really poor decision and we got what we deserved from it. Its not as if we were chasing the game at that point.

Good games from Morley, Carvell (apart from the stupid forearm smash which he should have walked for), Evans, both Monaghan and Hodgson but overall not good enough today.

im not so sure.... im not saying it wasn't the correct decision to rest players...at the end of the day tony smith is a genius and im a kn*b head in orford.... but we were obviously weakened by the omission of certain players.

also Monaghans injury played a big part in the result.

If we had won yesterday then TSs decisions would have been praised. I was another who said "if it aint broke..." but must admit when I saw the team it didnt leave me with any great reservations. Then I saw how the team was "playing"!!! There did appear to be an air of apathy about some aspects of our game, almost a lets go through the motions attitude followed by a the motions aint working what next panic. Im sure that Monaghan departure affect the team from the point of view of direction (exactly the same as Briers injury v wigan at home last season) and how they needed to step up. In fact this reminded me very much of the MM performance. If TS wants to use it to his advantage, replay the game to players and then ask anbody who think they played there best to leave the room and go and tell the public that....Im sure not many will go.


Anyway....didnt we lose the game because Hodgson couldnt kick 100% again. Damn, that player is too inconsistent for me

We were still in command of that game with the team we had out there we just lacked composure and made basic errors at the wrong time and they came from a variety of individuals. I'm still a bit baffled as to how we lost but we did.

In terms of lessons learnt, I think it was for me more about not getting caught up in the game, I thought when the key moments came we rushed them, Solomona didn't take the extra half a second to regain his feet, Cooper & Paul Wood entered collision wanting to promote the ball on early plays, Carvell tried to put Myler through a hole on play 1, stuff like that. We needed somebody, like Briers or Clarke to just force us down the middle and end sets on their line, we squandered too man sets in the last 10 mins on early plays having created another & another & another opportunity with good field position to win the game.

It wasn't about who played and who didn't, apart from losing Monas maybe which was huge but even without him we should have won.

I think if we'd have scored back to back tries at any point, and made the gap 10-12 pts, we'd have knocked the stuffing out of them, we always left them enough hope.

I will have to pick you up on that one. Catalans came with a simplistic game plan, which didn't show any great tactical nous. If that would have been a TV game, Stevo would have combusted with the manner of the punctuated play and the shear number of penalties.

Agreed.

In Stevo terms, I think we allowed ourselves to be sucked into the arm wrestle. I'm not sure Bentham helped neither, I think he issued a warning with 11 minutes left, it was a good 40 minutes overdue. All that said, we should have overcome this, and only didn't on the back of poor execution and decision making.

our own cullen esque performance aside, how can a ref issue that many penalties and not give a warning.

Also, how can a touchie run on and alert him to a grapple tackle, which as we all know is now a sinbinning automatically, only for bentham to look around very quizically and turn to say, keep em down.

It wasn't a high shot FFS.

That really annoyed me.

I think most of us fans had the we only need to turn up to win mentality, including me.