Catalan 40 Wakefield Wildcats 6: Webster fumes as Wakefield are out-muscled in France

James Webster tasted defeat as Wakefield coach for the first time in his first away game since taking over six matches ago.
Wakefield's Reece Lyne races away with Ali Lauitiiti in support.Wakefield's Reece Lyne races away with Ali Lauitiiti in support.
Wakefield's Reece Lyne races away with Ali Lauitiiti in support.

Webster was seething over his side’s performance, and said: “I’m pretty deflated and the team are obviously very disappointed and are out on their feet.

“We just weren’t able to handle the physicality of Catalan. They are a very good strong, physical team.

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“We’ve been able to get ourselves up week on week for five or six weeks now and this just seemed one game too many for us.

Wakefield's Tim Smith is closed down on a dismal day in France.Wakefield's Tim Smith is closed down on a dismal day in France.
Wakefield's Tim Smith is closed down on a dismal day in France.

“Physically, we lost the game. Catalan are very good at it. All their big players played really well and we weren’t able to handle that area of the game.

“I thought our effort was good, I thought we tried hard, we came in to the game with some sickness and some injuries, and we have had that for a long period of time.

“We have been patching players up week on week and I think that caught up with us.”

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Catalan coach Laurent Frayssinous was delighted with his side’s performance in Perpignan.

Elliott Whitehead scored a hat-trick of tries as the Dragons scored seven tries in a 40-6 victory to put the agony of the previous week’s 37-16 defeat to Wigan behind them.

The French side raced into a 28-0 half-time lead despite dropping the likes of Jeff Lima and Olivier Elima, while both Gregory Mounis and Vincent Duport were absent through suspension.

Wakefield did gain some consolation at 40-0 down as Paul McShane pounced on Escare’s knock-on to set Reece Lyne away to score unopposed. Paul Sykes’s conversion took the final score to 40-6.

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Frayssinous said: “I thought our performance was good enough to win the two points. We had 50 minutes with the ball and I am pretty happy that we stuck to our principles and our defensive effort for 80 minutes was pretty special.

“We worked for each other and they only scored with a scrappy try. Offensively we were pretty good and the game plan worked well for us.

“I thought it was a fair performance and we have two more points tonight and we didn’t have any more injuries.”

Frayssinous spoke about how his side improved their discipline after the performance against Wigan that saw them concede 13 penalties and have two men sin-binned.

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He added: “We worked a lot on our discipline. There is a fine line when it comes to discipline and we don’t want to go over this fine line.

“We will keep on working hard because we want to become the most disciplined team in the competition over the next few weeks to prepare ourselves for the play-off.”

Catalan Dragons: Escare; Millard, Taia, Pomeroy, Oldfield; Pryce, Williams, Simon, Henderson, Bousquet, Whitehead, Anderson, Baile. Replacements: Paea, Maria, Pelissier, T Margalet.

Wakefield Trinity Wildcats: Mathers; Owen, Keinhorst, Riley, Lyne; Sykes, T. Smith, Moore, McShane, Raleigh, Gilmour, Kirmond, Washbrook. Replacements: Lauitiiti, Ryan, Scruton, Tautai.

Referee: R Hicks (RFL).