Cup the key for Catalans
Olivier Elima believes victory over Crusaders in Sunday’s Carnegie Challenge Cup fifth round tie can be the catalyst which salvages Catalans Dragons’ season.
The Dragons have failed to re-produce the form that guided them to the play-off semi-finals last year and Elima admits there is no quick fix for the club who have taken just four points from their opening 13 games of Engage Super League XV.
Elima said: “If I had the answer, I’d tell you and we’d fix it straight away but it’s so complicated and a mixture of things. We didn’t start the season well and once you start losing you have that losing attitude.
“It’s going to be really hard for us to make the play-offs and get in the top eight. We’ve still got to try and play our best but we’re still in the Challenge Cup and Crusaders are our next challenge.
“We went over to Wrexham before and got beaten but we’re definitely going give them a real go and it will probably save our season.”
Crusaders have seen a rapid change in fortunes following their move to Wrexham and Elima has been impressed by the way in which they have turned themselves into play-off contenders after a bottom-of-the-table finish last year.
“They’ve got a good coach and they’ve got some good players,” he said. “It’s kind of a new team from last year.
“When you start getting coached well and get some good players who really want to do something for the coach and for the club, anything can happen.
“They seem to be really enjoying themselves on the pitch and that’s something we want to do as well at Catalans Dragons. It’s really good for Crusaders what they’re doing which is all credit to them playing out of their skin, but hopefully not at the weekend.”
The Dragons went down 34-18 to Castleford at Magic Weekend last Saturday and Elima is confident that consecutive wins in the coming few weeks will help lift the morale in the Perpignan camp.
The 26-year-old second row said: “In training the camp isn’t very good, but we’re trying to get out of that spiral which is really hard.
“We are trying to fix that by having good games, trying to get some wins in our pockets but it’s pretty hard. We’ve just got to keep working hard and get some wins in the coming weeks.”