Sam Tomkins admits Catalans had to ‘win ugly’ against Huddersfield

Catalans full-back Sam Tomkins stressed the importance of ‘winning ugly’ as his side maintained their unbeaten start to the new season against Huddersfield. 

The Dragons raced into a comfortable 20-6 lead at the break after tries from Matt Whitley, Ben Garcia and Mike McMeeken. 

And despite a scoreless second half at the Totally Wicked Stadium, they held on for a second successive victory. 

It also maintained the Giants’ losing start to the 2021 season under new boss Ian Watson. 

Speaking after the win, Man of the Match Tomkins admitted that his side need to clean up some basic errors if they want to keep challenging at the right end of the Super League table. 

He said: “It’s important to get a good start in the season. In both of those [opening two] games, we’ve had a period where we’ve been pretty scrappy.

“Today that came a little bit in the first half and the second. We know we need to be more consistent for 80 minutes, but sometimes you have to win ugly and that was it.”

The Dragons failed to trouble the scoreboard after the break as Huddersfield struck back through Sam Wood, but it wasn’t enough to force a dramatic fightback.

Tomkins accepts that lessons will be learned ahead of next weekend’s Challenge Cup tie against Wakefield.

“It’s obvious what we did wrong. As a spine, between me, Jimmy [Maloney] and Drinky [Josh Drinkwater], we didn’t organise well enough. 

“We tried to play around them and that played into Huddersfield’s hands. They defended it well and we paid the price by not getting over the line. We’ll learn a lot from that.

“You’ve got to win ugly, and today a lot of it was self-inflicted. I’ve never seen so many ball steals, so we’ve got to get better at that.” 

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