Catalans Dragons

Catalans Dragons’ players questioned as coach slams ‘unbelievably embarrassing’ loss to Hull KR

by
Sam Cook
June 13, 2025

Catalans Dragons interim coach Joel Tomkins has hit out at his side’s performance against Hull KR after they lost 68-6 at Craven Park.

There had been concerns that the Robins might have a Challenge Cup hangover after their win at Wembley on Saturday but they backed up less than a week later and absolutely routed a dismal Catalans Dragons.

The scores were level for the first 15 minutes but ill-discipline and poor defence quickly came to cost the Dragons with matters only made worse when their captain Benjamin Garcia was sent off for lashing out at Elliot Minchella before taking a swing at Mikey Lewis.

They would concede another 20 points in the first half after that, before shipping another 30 in the second half. Perhaps the only positive was that they did manage to score a try but not before they broke the record for the longest time between points in Super League, a whopping 312 minutes.

Interim coach Joel Tomkins spoke post-match on Sky Sports to assess the performance, labelling it “unbelievably embarrassing”, even suggesting that some players gave up at times.

Asked what’s going wrong, Tomkins responded: “If I knew that I’d change it, but it’s unbelievably embarrassing to be honest for me, for the club, for the group of players especially.”

Catalans Dragons “lost some pride in the badge” in defeat to Hull KR

Having lost their last three games to nil, the interim coach stated: “We’re just not there at the minute. We’re going to have to get ourselves out of it because nobody else is going to help us. For me, the only way we’re going to do that is by working hard and working a bit harder than we are because to come up against a team like that, it’s just based on effort, the 1% things and all the little clichés what coaches talk about, but it’s what wins you games.

“It’s what teams like Hull KR do and we’re just absolutely nowhere near that level at the minute.”

Tomkins would declare the scoreline as the most embarrassing element of the game, before stating: “Towards the back end of each half, I thought we looked like we gave up if I’m honest. We’re low on confidence, we’re low on energy and we looked like a few of our boys probably gave up a little bit at the end, which is probably the ultimate disrespect to the jersey.

“I think as a group, we’re going to have to start doing some really hard work. We spoke about it at half-time that they almost lost pride in the badge.”

He also explained that the group have to remain together, warning against fingers being pointed and insisting he expects his side to hurt from the defeat.

Tomkins argued: “We can’t be pointing fingers. I’ve been in dressing rooms myself as a player where when you start pointing fingers, there’s only one way it’s going to go and that’s down.

“We have to stick together. We have to try and stay positive if there’s anything we can be positive about. We just need to put a bit more effort in. It needs to mean a little bit more to the players individually.

“It’s got to hurt this. It’s got to really hurt because we were nilled for three weeks in a row and then we’ve turned up tonight and to me it doesn’t look like it’s hurt as much as it should have done. We’ll come in Monday, we’ll train hard and then we’ll have another go next week and hopefully we can turn it around.”