McNamara blasts “moment of madness”

Catalans Dragons Head Coach Steve McNamara blasts Zak Hardaker for his ‘moment of madness’.

McNamara saw his side produce arguably their best performance of the season with an emphatic 48-0 win over the Wigan Warriors in France.

However, perhaps the win was slightly overshadowed by a late scuffle between the two teams as Hardaker was dismissed following a head butt incident with England rival Sam Tomkins before his brother Joel came to his defence.

Joel was yellow carded for his part in the scrap with both players possibly facing suspensions from the match review panel.

Offering his thoughts on the altercation, McNamara said “The game has changed a lot but when someone clearly head butts someone else quite as clearly as that, in the sport that we play, to not be able to defend your teammates, people will decide what happens on the back of that.

“We are not going to get pushed around. Obviously, we do not condone foul play but it was as blatant a head butt as you can get and a player defended his team mate, as simple as that.

“We will see what comes on the back of that but I thought it was crazy for Zak Hardaker to do that initially.”

Despite the incident, McNamara heaped praise for his team, in both attack and defence as the Dragons became the first team to blank the Warriors since September last year.

“Similar to the St Helens Vs Hull FC match, we did create a lot of opportunities and I was really happy with our patience,” he added. 

“In the first half, it was difficult. We were dominating and we created lots of opportunities but the scoreboard was not going ‘as fast as it probably could have done’ and that was the impressive bit for us is to not to panic from that but to turn straight away into defence and get that on again.

“You score lots of points but we did not concede any as well. I thought our physical dominance of the game was there to be seen today.”