Tanguy Zenon and Ben Lam are the standout names in Remi Casty and Justin Murphy's first squad of the season as French rugby league starts this weekend Yay!!
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Fixtures are here - http://www.catalansdragons.com/en/calendrier-elite/
Its all or nothing Hull this weekend.
Not that the popular Amazon streaming programme would want to focus on this battle between two desperate sides.
Hull are battling to avoid the spoon, something we gave them hope of achieveing after that bitty win over London last weekend.
But they have been awful this season, losing games by the sort of points difference we used to reserve for our trips to St Helens, Leeds and Wigan... e.g. 40+ points.
However, with something to play for they might put on a show in their last home game to send the outgoing management team away with some pride for their efforts.
From a Dracs perspective I would argue we need a performance as much as we need a result.
The recent form has been desperate and it certainly feels that the high amount of player turnover has contributed to this.
6 defeats from 10 in no form to go into the playoffs with even if we can still make it by kick off time.
Its more that the last two displays, at Salford and at home to London, have been against a backdrop of such uninspiring rugby that I don't see how we turn on a tap of free flowing try scoring action to get some points.
But.
We still have that opportunity and a chance so we have to go at it from minute one and win the game. I hope we can.
Well, who saw this coming ?
Not me, that is for sure.
We left this website out to dry back at the start of last year after time pressure meant that I could no longer update it.
There was a period where the offer for someone to take over the site was place, but the option was never taken up.
So the website was mothballed and that appeared to be that.
But there was always a nagging itch to scratch that I wasn't done telling the story of Catalans Dragons and their fans in the UK.
So let's give it another go, this feels like the right time with interaction and engagement high on social media platforms.
So what did we miss in the fallow year and a bit?
Well, there was a second grand final but that was even more of a non-event than the first one we made and that 2018 Challenge Cup Final win remains the only silverwear we have won (discounting the old seperate clubs that made up the Catalans back in the day).
Despite some close shaves with Bernard and his meat cleaver, Steve McNamara remains in post and despite my public reservations about the coaching set up over the years, he has done a good job with three finals since 2018.
The challenge remains winning SuperLeague and we seen intent on trying players out for just a year before binning them off (sometimes for watching Burna Boy) and starting all over again.
It looks clear enough to me.... give some French players some time and let them develop alongside some etrangers.
But we don't seem to learn.
And we are now playing a super defensive, non-expansive game as the 8 players off contract look to get to the end of their time with the club with enough in the tank to hit the ground running next year.
Challenging times.
