Heat won’t play into our hands, says Mcnamara
CATALANS Dragons boss Steve Mcnamara doesn’t believe the blazing Perpignan heat will play into his side’s hands tonight.
The French outfit welcome Hull FC to the Stade Gilbert Brutus and as temperatures are expected to exceed 30C, both sides will be preparing for a hard fought, draining and gruelling contest.
Of course, the Dragons will be accustomed to such conditions as they live and train by the Mediterranean, but it comes with its downsides, too, as Mcnamara is quick to point out.
“There’s a couple of ways you can deal with it,” the Catalans boss told the Mail.
“You can change things around and try and get out as early as you can while it’s not as warm, but we tend to stick to our programme.
“We know it’s hot, we know we have to get on with it and play in it so we may as well train in it.
“We generally accept it is part of living here, training here and playing here.
“It works both ways actually. Sometimes you can just fly in, fly out and get it done, but when you live here and the weather does get warm, it disrupts peoples sleep for periods of time as well.
“It is what it is, it’s like us coming across there in January, February and March, with the cold and wet conditions. It’s horses for courses and it is what it is.”
The weather certainly didn’t help Catalans last weekend either as they were beaten by a very game Huddersfield Giants outfit on home soil.
The Dragons produced a lacklustre display against the Challenge Cup finalists and Mcnamara is demanding a response this time around.
“We were hugely disappointed with our performance last week,” he added.
“We’ve lost games in recent times but we’ve probably not performed as poorly as that for a long, long period of time. We’re looking to respond from that this week.”
Catalans and Hull aren’t strangers to each other, having produced an enthralling contest at the MKM Stadium just a few weeks ago.
The Black and Whites edged that one 14-8 with Jake Connor’s goals being the difference and although the full-back will miss the contest through injury, Mcnamara is expecting a similarly tight game.
“It was a really high quality game,” Mcnamara added.
“Both teams played really strongly and Hull got on the right side of the victory which was important for them. It showed in that game, it was two really good teams playing against each other and I think it will be the same again this week.”