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.

Domestic season starts with a win...

 

Hull 4-24 Catalans Dragons

 Stats from Love Rugby League here.

Thank goodness the 2024 Superleague season is over from a Catalans perspective. 

This match was the epitomy of our recent performances. Patchy, lack of cohesion and a lot of errors. 

But as with the London performance last week, we managed to get over the line and win. 

Hull are a poor side this season but started well and took the lead before the Dragons managed to survive a disallowed try from retiring Danny Houghton. 

They managed to get back in the game before the break and pulled away late on. 

Nothing positive to say at this point and this article sums it up. 

First squad for new Super 13 French competition

 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!! 

Click here to read more. 

Fixtures are here - http://www.catalansdragons.com/en/calendrier-elite/

Hull FC Away Preview

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. 

Stats from RL Record Keepers Club 

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. 

Call it a comeback

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.