Catalans Dragons boss Steve McNamara makes pressure admission following heavy Leigh Leopards defeat

Catalans boss Steve McNamara insists he’s feeling no pressure, and remains confident his Dragons side can still achieve big things this year despite losing their first three Super League games of the season.

The Dragons followed up their home loss against Hull FC and defeat at Warrington Wolves with a dismal showing on Friday night at Leigh Leopards.

Beaten 34-6, McNamara’s side served up their most abject performance of the season so far as their worst start to a Super League campaign since 2018 came to fruition.

Catalans Dragons boss Steve McNamara makes pressure admission following heavy Leigh Leopards defeat

Lacking discipline and any real spark throughout, their only points came late on as interchange Alrix Da Costa got himself over the try-line. By that point, the game was well and truly lost.

Catalans’ only victory of the year remains a 14-0 success against Championship outfit Halifax Panthers in the Third Round of the Challenge Cup on February 8.

Post-match at Leigh, McNamara – who has been in charge in Perpignan since June 2017 – said: “We’re three games in. We won seven from eight last year at the start of the season and we weren’t sat here talking about us doing this or doing that.

“There’ll be no panic in terms of this. We’re clearly disappointed in terms of where we’re at, with tonight’s performance, and we need to get back on track really quickly. Hopefully that’ll come next week.

“Judging tonight’s performance on its own merit, it clearly wasn’t good enough.”

Former England boss McNamara is Super League’s longest-serving head coach by some distance, and has delivered a Challenge Cup to the Dragons faithful as well as two Grand Final appearances.

But after his side failed to deliver last term in missing out on the play-offs entirely, their poor start to the 2025 campaign has done nothing to alleviate any concerns.

McNamara though continued: “We’ve got some reasons why the start of the season hasn’t gone as well as we thought it should’ve done. We feel we should have been a lot better, but that’s the reality of where we’re at.

“We’ll stay really strong about where we’re at and what we can achieve this year, because I honestly believe we can. I said it after last week and I said it after Round 1.

“I know we’ve got a really good team there, and we’ve certainly not shown it tonight, but I thought we did last week (against Warrington) and we’ll work towards trying to get back to that type of performance week in, week out.”