When Catalans Dragons came desperately close to lifting their first Super League title at Old Trafford last October, few rugby league fans expected them to be anywhere near their victors Wigan this season. The French side were breaking up, with a string of retirements and departures meaning the coach, Steve McNamara, would have to rebuild the team. And yet three weeks ago the Dragons were snapping at Wigan’s heels at the top of the table. Now, after shock defeats at Castleford and London Broncos, no one has any idea what they will produce next – least of all McNamara.
The former England manager was seething after his team’s 12-10 defeat at London on Sunday, describing their performance as “terrible” and “unacceptable”. Was he shocked? “100%, I never saw that coming. We were a million miles off.”
With seven games to go, the Dragons have dropped to sixth in the Super League table. They remain comfortably in the final playoff place – no one below them seems likely to bridge the four-point gap – but they trail the top two clubs by six points so are a long way off a home semi-final. Instead, their new target is to finish fourth and start the playoffs in Perpignan.
Even McNamara does not know which version of his team will turn up. “You think you’ve taken some steps forward and then you haven’t, then you have, then you haven’t,” he said after the match in Wimbledon. “We’ve been very consistent over the last four seasons and right now we’re very inconsistent. It’s an issue we had cleared up a long time ago but it’s got back into our game.”
McNamara’s half-back problems continued in the defeat to the Broncos. The sacking of Jayden Nikorima and the return of Sam Tomkins after nine months in retirement meant the pairing of Arthur Mourgue and Théo Fages, with Tomkins at full-back and César Rougé on the bench. But no matter who had the ball, their passing was startlingly inaccurate. “We were really poor, with a lack of urgency, and that’s everyone’s responsibility,” said McNamara. The coach was so frustrated that he ventured on to the pitch late in the second half to discuss tactics with Tomkins. It didn’t work.
Tomkins is a player who spans generations. He is his manager’s voice on the field, having joined the coaching team this winter. At the age of 35 though, his spark has understandably gone.
Instead he uses his world-class spatial awareness and understanding of when to step into a gap, rather than explode as he did for the first 15 years of his career. His defensive decision-making remains solid: facing three breaking Broncos players with nothing but the sideline to help, he still put enough doubt in Josh Rourke’s mind to bring the Broncos full-back down, and later held up Sadiq Adebiyi over the try line. And his relationship with officials has not altered with age; he was haranguing the referee all the way to the tunnel after the hooter, while McNamara and his stunned assistant Thomas Bosc sat on a wall and stared into space.
The Dragons played as if they had driven from the Pyrenees on a cramped minibus. Instead, they had flown to London on Saturday and are spending this week in four-star hotels. No wonder the owner, Bernard Guasch, was apoplectic. Having dug deep into the profits of his meat empire to fund the Dragons for two decades, Guasch said he had “never been so ashamed in 25 years of presidency”.
As well as the dying of Tomkins’ light, the 36-year-old Michael McIlorum is no longer at his effervescent best, and they are still without the injured Tom Johnstone and Mike McMeeken – who will both join Wakefield next season. Half a dozen top players will leave the club in the autumn, with a string of high-profile recruits arriving; the Dragons side that starts next season will look nothing like the team that finished last year one try from glory. New signings Jarrod Wallace and Reimis Smith (who arrives from Melbourne on Saturday) should add more ballast up the middle: they need to deliver the damaging runs missing from their pack.
McNamara’s attention now turns to facing Huddersfield on Friday night. “It’s clear what’s possible with this group, given the performances that we have produced against some of the top teams this season, but what we’ve not done is clean up some of the other games. In our last two away games we’ve gone down at Castleford and London. To give yourself an opportunity to play on the big stage you’ve got to do these games. We’ll see what Friday brings.”
McNamara has proven himself as one of the code’s finest coaches. Now he is being severely tested again. Taking the Dragons side into the top six, let alone to a third Grand Final, could be his greatest achievement yet.
Clubcall: London Broncos
While relieved that his side have picked up their second win of the season, the London Broncos coach, Mike Eccles, remains frustrated. Without knowing what parachute payment they will get, if any, they are unable to plan for next season in the Championship. “How can we?” asked an exasperated Eccles. “We don’t even know how many teams are going to go down.”
Despite the uncertainty, Eccles credited his players for the fight they have shown. “We’re all in this mess together and we’re going to stick in it together to the end. They could just throw in the towel and get through the end of the year, or we can try to enjoy it, put in good performances and have the integrity to see it through. How they dig in for each other is absolutely remarkable.”
Foreign quota
The maverick London winger Hakim Miloudi – one of the few France internationals who has never played for Catalans Dragons or Toulouse Olympique – was understandably cock-a-hoop on Sunday. “Being from Perpignan, it’s a big deal,” he said. “Every time it’s special to play them and want to show them. It was like a big fight. They don’t give up, we don’t give up. It was crazy.”
Goal line drop out
Fresh on the heels of the 2026 World Cup being awarded to Australia and Papua New Guinea, the IRL has announced that Kenya, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and the US are among the bidders for the next three standalone events. The wise money will be on France getting the 2028 Women’s World Cup, England hosting the wheelchair tournament in 2029, and the men’s tournament going to New Zealand in 2030. The Las Vegas project will propel the US into that mix but they may have to wait a little longer to host their first Rugby League World Cup.
Fifth and last
There were no trains running to Haydons Road on Sunday, so I ventured to the London v Broncos match on the tube. It was a nostalgic journey that highlighted the logistical challenges facing rugby league fans in London. In the mid 1990s, I did that twentysomething thing of moving to London and living in a different place every year. I moved near Copthall Stadium a few weeks after the Broncos had left, and I never caught up with them. After I moved west and started going to The Stoop, they went back to Charlton, leaving me with an excruciating 80-minute schlep across the city. At one point I lived within sight of the old Plough Lane floodlights. Nowadays that would leave me a 15-minute stroll alongside the River Wandle to Super League games, which I took on Sunday. If only watching league in London were always that simple.
