Mixed emotions for Brett Hodgson as fans return but Hull suffer defeat

Hull led 10-4 early in the second half after tries from Mahe Fonua and Josh Reynolds, but Catalans hit back with 23 unanswered points in the final 26 minutes to secure their fifth Super League win of the season.

REPORT: Hull 10-27 Catalans: Dragons win in Hull

And despite admitting his side were not good enough against the French outfit, Hodgson is confident Hull will taste success in their next home match – which will take place at the end of June due to maintenance of the playing surface.

Hodgson said: “Disappointed, obviously. Catalans came with a good game plan, they put us in the corner and pretty much ground out an 80-minute performance, which is something we wanted to do.

“Again, I thought we learned some good lessons on how to play against a top-line team and unfortunately, we came up short today.

“They definitely had a solid 80 minutes and we had areas which we can still improve.

“I’m disappointed that we didn’t play well enough to get the result and the crowds coming back is brilliant. You could hear the atmosphere, they tried to get us home but unfortunately we weren’t good enough today.

“I’m really excited about the next time, it’s many weeks now until we can come back here, but the next time we are here, we’ll give a little bit better performance to make sure they go away smiling.”

Hodgson also believes the Black and Whites will bounce back from the heaviest defeat of his tenure, starting at Leeds on Sunday.

Hodgson added: “It’s imperative that we get a response.

“The players are really hurting at the moment and we need to have a response at training to make sure we go into our game next week prepared and turn around what happened today.

“We aren’t the finished product yet. We came up against a side that, in my opinion, are top four in the competition, and we were taught some lessons today.

“We will process this, we are on a path at the moment so we won’t have success every single week.”