The Galpharm chief answers the questions put to him by Examiner RL writer Chris Roberts.

APART from the result (losing 27-20), did everyone have a good trip to France for the Catalan Dragons game?

When you don’t get the two League points, it’s always a much longer trip!

That obviously takes the gloss off everything.

Having said that, it’s always good to spend some time together as a group.

But we did come away from the ground on Saturday night feeling bitterly disappointed, because we did put ourselves in a position to win the game.

In the first half, I thought they were a bit better than us in some areas and created a few more opportunities.

But in the second half, there were times when we were the better team. Unfortunately, we didn’t control a few things just a little bit better and, ultimately, that cost us.

At the same time, you should always give credit to the opposition when they beat you, and there’s no doubt Catalan a good team.

The Dragons are unbeaten at home so far in Super League. Can you see them remaining unbeaten all season in Perpignan?

They are clearly very, very hard to beat at home, but I think they can be beaten.

But when the weather is a bit better it’s probably easier for sides flying in there to be competitive, so I can see them possibly losing one game.

The key for them – like it is for a lot of teams – is keeping all their good players fit, and if they do that then they’re always going to be one of tougher teams in the competition.

Were some of the tries you conceded the most disappointing aspect of the Catalan defeat?

Yes, we did let in a couple of uncharacteristic tries.

That was very disappointing, because we’ve been defending really well this year.

When it comes to conceding tries, sometimes it’s the reward for some good attack against you and at other times it’s down to not concentrating or sticking to your principles as well as you can. That happened a couple of times at the weekend.

When we do certain things really well we’re obviously hard to break down. That’s why we’ve got the best defence in the competition at this stage of the year.

But when we don’t do things well we become a bit more vulnerable, which was the case against the Dragons.