Sam Tomkins launches passionate defence of Catalans Dragons coach

Sam Tomkins has backed long-serving coach Steve McNamara to guide the French club back to a position of dominance in the British game.

After three straight defeats at the start of the Super league season, which saw the former England captain also ruled out by injury, Catalans and Tomkins are now up and running with back-to-back wins over Leeds Rhinos and Featherstone in the Challenge Cup.

And in an exclusive interview with Love Rugby League, Tomkins has backed McNamara to bring success back to the Dragons after a difficult recent period.

“Steve is very passionate about the club and has been here a long time,” Tomkins told Love Rugby League.

“He is the longest-serving Super League head coach by some distance. Steve’s priorities haven’t changed, he knows we need to build on last year.

“He is like the players, confident that this group will be there or thereabouts if we can get some consistency of team selection on the field. He works hard and does some really long hours. I think we will see the results of that.”

Catalans missed out on the playoffs last year, having reached the Grand Final 12 months earlier. The Dragons needed a big start to 2025, but lost talisman Tomkins to injury and lost their opening three games.

“The start to the season for me was a bit of a nightmare but I’m healthy now and ready to crack on.

“Coming off the back of last year we were really disappointed with how we went. We have got a lot of new players in this season and ideally we wanted to hit the ground running, but we haven’t clicked fully yet.

“We are working hard and I’m confident we will come good. There have been good parts in every game so far, the Leeds game was more of the Catalans performance you would expect every week.

“We were really proud of the way people didn’t like to come to Catalans. Every team wants to have a home ground that people know they are never going to get an easy day at.

“Last year we were very poor. This year nobody will get an easy run against us at home. Even against Hull, it was four tries to one but in reality three of those came from our errors.

“We want to gain that back and make the Brutus a fortress as it has been in the past. We are different to every other team given we are not in the UK so we want to make it as difficult as possible for people coming here.”