New Assistant Coaches

Catalans Dragons have appointed Joel Tomkins and Ryan Sheridan as assistant coaches ahead of the 2025 season.

Read more here.

Vote for your 2024 Superleague player of the season

 https://forums.rlfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=648894

Change of role for Hall of Famer

Click here for statement from official website

Thomas Bosc has left his coaching role at Catalans Dragons for a more holistic position at the club. 

He will now look at the recruitment of young players and bringing them through to the senior teams at the Stade Gilbert Brutus. 

We wish him well in his new position. 

St Esteve 38 vs 24 St Gaudens

 Another win for the reserves in the Super 13. 

St Estève XIII Catalan (22) 38

T : Lam, Darrelatour 2, Humbert, M. Masuaute, Castano, Devoyon
G : Devoyon 5

St Gaudens (6) 24
T : Pons, Hellec 2, Multignier 
G : Hellec 4

Limoux 37-36 Dragons - Domestic French League

Arghhhh

A golden point loss to Limoux was the outcome of this weekends match. 

1 win and 1 loss from the two matches to date. 

Match report from Treize Mondial

Greg Bird - Hall of Fame Entry

 Greg Bird is a controversial but welcome entry to our Hall of Fame.

He enjoyed 2 spells with the club making close to 100 appearances having arrived from Australia under a cloud in the first instance. 

After a year he went back redeemed and played for Gold Coast before heading back the Northern Hemisphere in 2017. 

(Data sourced from - https://stats.rugbyleaguerecords.com/teamdirectory.php?tselect=83 )

His first season whetted the appetite despite us having to wait 8 years to get him back. 

2017 wasn't his best season but in 2018 he scored 5 tries in 27 appearances, all starts and none from the bench. 

He did appear less and more off the bench in his farewell 2019 campaign but by this stage his legacy was clear. 

This wasn't the Greg Bird who had caused so much trouble and heartache in the NRL. This was Greg the entertainer and good bloke who caused chaos on the pitch and had time to speak to the fans. 

Could he be seen as the wrong sort of person to glamourise in a Hall of Fame? Maybe. But then I hope his behaviour from early in his career wasnt repeated later on and that he was more mature as a result. 

One thing is for sure, he would make most peoples Catalans all time thirteen and rightly so. 

Welcome to the Hall of Fame Greg! 

2025 ins and outs

Despite having to pay richer clubs than us their expenses to play us (only joking!) we are working towards being more competitive in 2025.

Ins

Luke Keary

Tevita Pangai Junior

Elliott Whitehead

Nick Cotric

Tommy Makinson

Olly Partington

Outs

Michael McIlorum

Tom Davies

Tom Johnstone

Mike McMeeken

Jordan Abdull

Manu Ma’u

Matt Ikuvalu

Jarrod Wallace

Update - Sam Tomkins has told the media he will be back for the whole of next season after coming out of retirement half way through 2024. I am not sure if that counts as an "in" so am putting it here :) !

Season 2024 review

Catalans Dragons ended 2024 outside of the playoffs after reaching the 2023 grand final. 

Superleague stats from the official website.

We played 27 league games winning 15 and losing 12. 

Tellingly we only scored 474 points and conceding 427 leaving a +47 points difference, the metric that ultimately saw us outside the playoff spots. 

St Helens took the last spot with a +208 difference. 

So even if we had sparked against London and Hull in our last two league matches, as opposed to struggling to put away the bottom two teams, we would still have been struggling to close that gap and sneak ahead. 

The last 10 games of the season summed it all up with 5 wins and 5 losses. The August 12-10 defeat away to London being the game that we will look back on as the one that got away. 

To be honest after that game morale was shot and we were fighting an uphill battle against form and momentum, both of which were going against us. 

The attack was the key area highlighted as letting us down. The try shy Dragons probably made the season seem worse than it was. Fact is though we scored 64 tries less than Hull KR who topped the regular season charts and that is nowhere close to being good enough. 

As a result we were close to 300 points (or 10 games of points if you average it to 30 per game) behind Warrington who were the best of the season. 

That speaks volumes and its that Catalans way of playing from deep and running in tries that we need to get back in 2025. 

With the core of the English players announcing mid-season that they were all off the shutters seemed to come down and we knocked off for the campaign. 

The likes of McMeechen, Johnstone and Davies have done brilliant things for our club, but their latter appearances and availability wont be remembered too fondly. Getting the right contract length and signing and exit plan is key to the success of the next few seasons. 

We will start to look ahead to 2025 shortly. But for now let's enjoy the domestic league and hope for some Dracs success.

Fingers crossed... 🤞

McNamara interview

 I have remained critical of the gaffer over the years, mainly due to how we play. 

But this open and reflective interview is something else.

Chapeau.

Massive shift for domestic French rugby league

 Catalan Media has broken the news that the domestic French rugby league calendar will be moving to summer in a seismic move and change to the season. 

https://www.catalanmedia.com/recent-articles

Lots of stuff about League 1 and combined competition between clubs in the two nations. 

Sounds promising. 

I am a bit gutted from the perspective of having all round Catalans rugby to watch, but bigger picture is in play here.