much obliged. spoke to adrian morley this morning, he not been to barcelona since he was a kid and very upbeat about the atmosphere. out of interest, which of the dragons players would it be accurate to describe as catalan? guessing it's people from perpignan and around (guisset, bosc) as opposed to guys like ferriol from lezignan or fakir who i think has north african background?

You'd have to do a bit of research as to find out where they were born, but the guys with Catalan surnames are:

Thomas Bosc (Bosc=Forest)
David Ferriol
Julien Touxagas
Florian Quintilla
Rémi Casty
David Guasch
Mathias Pala (Pala=Shovel)
Vincent Pagès (Pagès=Farmer)

Don't know who out of that eight will actually be involved though.

Guisset from Perpignan? I thought he picked up league as an expat living in Oz, at least he always gets labelled as an ozzy.

Yup, the big two will be "world-class" Ferriol and "the man pulling the strings" Bosc.

No, Jerome signed for Canberra as a teenager after impressing as a youngster in france (he went on to make 4 appearances in the NRL and learnt his english out there hence the accent). I actually have a programme from a GB v Aus match at Old Trafford some years ago in which GB academy played France and Jerome is listed on the teamsheet - incidently Warrington's Lee Briers lined up in the GB team in the same game.

Raining at the moment, but hopefully it will get it all out of the way for tomorrow.

An you have the cheek to take the pi$$ out of Rovers

This is rubbish, you can tell Catalans are a good team receiving next to no coaching input.

and your reasoning for that is.....

Walters has come in with his new ideas and its taken the players longer than expected to settle into his ways etc etc. the dragons beat leeds last time out so you can't say that there is no coaching input.

Sometimes these things just happen, you also should take into account that the majority of the dragons team played last week, where as how many of the warrington players played in the international.

You sometimes just have one of those days at the office, how many would expect greeny to drop the ball whilst running with it after taking so many high balls with ease?

Better team except for one or two inexplicable journeymen signings. Said rubbish players get first-team time for no good reason. Better team doing less well.
Results are poor
Squad selection is poor
Do the math

what makes you justify a good reason?

Absolutely fantastic day out!

Two did.

Meanwhile, Warrington had a game on the Sunday while the likes of Mogg, McGuire, Bell, Ryles, Carlaw, Greenshields etc had a weekend off.

returned from Barca, must say what a turn out from the Catalans supporters and also the travelling Wire support. Thought the Wire were lucky to be only 10 - 6 down at half time you could have scored on a number of ocasions. We knuckled down in the second half and finished moves off. Great atmosphere both in and around the ground made this a special occasion although the right result for the Wire



Your club must have done a really good job with the marketing of this game to the Perpignan based Catalan fans, well done.



Look forward to the next trip to Catalan.

Great to hear, unfortunate results though. Fans are very disapointed. Not sure the stadium was the best choice: looked largely empty with twice as much as the number of supporters in Perpignan

. It certainly did not help the team to feel the home support...
Hopefully the lacklustre of the result will not affect the interest of the locals in the game and the Dragons for the next time

Unfortunate results? Ok Catalans lost but Catalonia won and played some great rugby.
Maybe the supporters should be asking the players for answers not the club. The players just seemed to stop trying 10 minutes into the second half.
You say Lluis Companys wasn't the best choice, but how many stadiums were there to choose from?

You cant say the result did any favours, a win would have looked better and might have brought a few more along next time. (hopefully there is a next time)




You might know a bit more about these grounds than me but.......

Estadi de la Nova Creu Alta 20k
Nou Estadi 14k
Camp d'Esports 14k
Mini Estadi 15k

there were a lot more there too, I think the ground did look a bit empty in places but I feel were nit picking, 18k in spain and we still find something to moan about!!

There were two games on Saturday and the Catalonia-Czech Republic game drew a large crowd. A lot of people after the game were talking about the first game.
True a Dragons win would have looked better, but they were outplayed.


Nova Creu Alta, Camp d'esports and el Nou Estadi aren't in Barcelona.
La Nova Creu Alta is in Sabadell.
El Nou Estadi is in Tarragona.
El Camp d'Esports in is Lleida.
The mini estadi is next door to the Camp Nou, but there are two things. Firstly, was it even a choice? Would Barça have even entertained the idea?
I know there was a game there yesterday. Secondly looking at the capacity that means that around 3,000 fans would have been denied the chance to see the two games. Those could have been 3,000 potential new fans.


To be honest I didn't pay too much attention the empty spaces as I was too busy watching the games. Some of the Rugby played by Catalonia and both Super League teams in the first half was excellent.

but how many would it have drawn had it been played as a stand alone game?

Not many. Don't understand why you asked the question though?
It was played before the 'main' game as a way to show Catalans that there is a league and national team in Catalonia. There was lots of publivcity for the league and the international against Morocco in July.

I don't understand why there are "international" games with Catalonia. Is there a refusal to build a Spanish team? The use of the term international is a bit questionable and seems to me like making a political point about Catalonia being a country. What's your views?

It's not that there is a refusal to build a Spanish team, there IS no rugby league in Spain.
In other sports like water polo and roller hockey the vast majority of the Spanish national team is made up of Catalans and despite political efforts the governing bodies refuse to accept a Catalonia team.
I've lived in Spain and Catalonia and to me personally they feel like two different places. I know, work and live with Catalans and most of them don't consider themselves to be Spanish.
At the end of the day you had two teams from different countries and in my opinion that qualifies as international.

Here's your [url=http://www.sang-et-or.net/readarticle.php?article_id=573match report[/url

I can't believe you nominated Elima as your man of the match after a shocking attack on Monaghan's head.

Anyway, moving on... the Catalans fans were a pleasure to be around all weekend and helped make it an unforgettable trip. Thanks folks.

[url=http://www.sang-et-or.net/readarticle.php?article_id=574More[/url

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