FIVE days on from our bitterly disappointing Super League defeat at Catalans Dragons and we’re still really hurting as a group.

And I know the fans are also still feeling the pain, and that adds to my sense of disappointment, because we all know they deserved so much better for the sacrifices they had made in travelling to the South of France.

I think what really hit everyone so hard about this performance was that it was in such contrast to the way we had performed against Hull KR the week before.

Our display against Rovers was our best of the season. We produced some decent stuff on attack and defended extremely strongly.

It gave us all cause for genuine optimism that we had finally turned the Super League corner and would have a very firm foundation on which to build a strong second half of the campaign.

But as a result of the events of last Saturday, we have taken another backward step, which I am afraid is indicative of the season we have had.

We’ve now held our review of the Catalans game and watched the match on dvd which, as you can imagine, didn’t make very pleasant viewing.

It just re-inforced what we all felt at the time.

We paid the price for making a slow start – something we knew we couldn’t afford to do – and we were almost immediately on the back foot.

And with Catalans having the momentum behind them, they went for the jugular.

In contrast, we had no field position whatsoever, coming up with far too many errors and conceding some very cheap penalties.

That meant we lost the energy battle, and when we had the ball we kept on running at a defence that was settled. The Dragons temporarily returned to second spot in Super League on the back of this performance, and you could see why.

On top of that, there were one or two of our players who just didn’t seem to fancy the fight, which is something else that’s hugely disappointing.

But even though this was such a devastating result for all concerned, we can’t afford to dwell too long on it.

I’m sure the players would have loved the opportunity to have been in action this weekend in a bid to get last Saturday’s bitter memories out of their system, but we’re all going to have to wait until June 15 at Wakefield for that to happen.

Because of that break, the players have been given a few days off.

They’ve still got their weight programmes to follow, but they don’t have to report in for training as usual this week.

It’s the chance for the players to get over any bumps and bruises they are carrying – I don’t think there’s anyone at this stage who can claim to be totally injury-free – and return next week refreshed, both physically and mentally, ready for some more hard work.

It’ll also give everyone time to think about what went wrong in Perpignan and work towards making sure we have no repeat of this again.

That’s what we all so desperately want.