McNamara frustrated by Saints’ late show

Steve McNamara believes Sunday’s scoreline at St Helens wasn’t a fair reflection of his team’s overall performance.

The visitors took the lead three times in the first half courtesy of tries from Justin Horo, Luke Walsh and Tony Gigot.

However, scores from Theo Fages, Alex Walmsley and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook gave Saints the lead at half-time.

Horo’s second try put the Dragons ahead, but Jonny Lomax, Mark Percival, Luke Thompson and Ryan Morgan crossed for the hosts to secure victory.

McNamara said: “When you concede tries at any stage it hurts you on the scoreboard, so I’m really disappointed defensively with us.

“Particularly in those last eight minutes when we were only down by two, to let a couple of soft tries in is so disappointing.

“It was a huge effort from the players, but we need to be better if we’re going to pick up two points.”

Catalan complete their regular season fixtures against Castleford next weekend and McNamara thinks it will be the ideal preparation as they prepare to take part in The Qualifiers.

“All the games are tough in Super League now, but we’ve finished with Wigan, Saints and Cas which is a great challenge for our group,” he added.

“We’ve had little bits of adversity in different areas and I think we showed that with eight minutes on the clock we were right in that contest.

“It’ll be be good to play Castleford next week – it’s a short turnaround and then the week off going into the Middle 8s.”