McNamara rues missed opportunity

Steve McNamara believes Catalan missed a golden opportunity to defeat table-topping Castleford on Saturday.

The Tigers ran out 32-24 winners despite being reduced to 11 men during the second half and McNamara felt the Dragons let Daryl Powell’s side off the hook.

“I’m disappointed we never closed the game off,” he said. “I thought we were in a position to win the game after a dreadful start, we dominated large parts of that game.

“Our lack of ability to control the ball and control the period of time the Castleford were down to 12 men and 11 men for a short period of time probably cost us.

“We’ve been competitive in every game since I’ve been here. We’ve given ourselves a chance to win every game since I’ve been here and a lot of that has been down to sheer hard work, effort, energy and the ability to turn up to work every day and try and improve.

“To try and be a successful team, not only now but in the future, a team has to have those qualities.

“Now our job is to add some polish on top of that but you can’t put that first, you have to have those attributes first and over the last five weeks we’ve gone a long way to reinstating those in the Catalan Dragons.”