Catalan 40 Wakefield Wildcats 6: Webster fumes as Wakefield are out-muscled in France
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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“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.
“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.”
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdCatalan 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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdFrayssinous 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.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdHe 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).