Steve McNamara makes Grand Final claim after Leeds Rhinos loss

Despite suffering an 18-6 loss to Leeds Rhinos, Catalans Dragons boss Steve McNamara has insisted that his side ‘will be in the playoffs’ and can get back to Old Trafford.

The game was billed as a must-win match for each side with Catalans knowing they could distance the Rhinos with a win, whereas for Leeds they would cut the gap to just two points if they were victorious.

For the second time this season, Leeds Rhinos defeated Catalans at Headingley but they had to come from behind after trailing 6-0 at halftime.

Catalans head coach Steve McNamara spoke to Sky Sports after the game about the result, expressing pride amongst the disappointment.

He explained: “Obviously a massive disappointment last week in terms of what happened but we were in all sorts of trouble at the start of the week in terms of injuries. We lost four from the game, we had the captains run yesterday where three of the players couldn’t even complete that so underneath all of the disappointment, I’m really really proud of the effort tonight.”

Leeds Rhinos dent Catalans playoff hopes

On where the game went wrong, McNamara pointed to the tackling in the second half, particularly early on when Leeds Rhinos managed to get a foothold back in the game, before bemoaning a lack of penalties.

He stated: “I thought our tackling was poor at the start of the second half. We didn’t control some of the ruck and they got some momentum and got through the ruck on us but they owned position and possession.

“It was the second game in a row where we didn’t a penalty in the second half apart from one with 11 seconds to go so we couldn’t really get any help on that situation but we dug in hard but we just fell a little bit short today.”

With the loss marking the fourth in six games, McNamara was quizzed about a ‘lack of belief’ in the squad given that their playoff berth has gone from near-guaranteed to in major doubt.

He batted back: “There’s no problem with belief, don’t worry about that. We’re not where we want to be right now, we’re not playing the best we want to be. We’ve got some reasons behind that, but we’re in a strong position.

“We’re still holding the destiny in our hands, there’s four games to go. We’re very, very confident by the end of those four games, we’ll be in the playoffs and we can get back to where we were at Old Trafford.”

Looking ahead to champions Wigan Warriors and their remaining four games, McNamara explained: “Hopefully there’ll be a few (back). Obviously we’ve got Tariq Sims who’ll be back from suspension but we’ve got a lot of players on the sidelines right now. We’ve had 18 players to choose from today so it’s a tough period for us, but you learn a lot from everybody during this period.

“Like I said, I’m really, really confident in this group. We’ll be fine.”