DARYL POWELL was frustrated to see the lead slip away from Wakefield Trinity as they were beaten at Catalans Dragons.
Although they managed to take it to extra time, Reimis Smith scored a winning try after Mason Lino was sin-binned for a high tackle on Guillermo Aiuspuro-Bichet.
“I thought we were great in the first half and pretty poor in the second,” said Powell.
“Catalans put their foot down after the break and I expected them to come out and fight like they did.
“Conceding a try in the first five minutes, we needed to regain control of the game and we couldn’t do it.
“We gave penalties away and eventually Catalans just weigh you down with their size.
“It’s disappointing but we’ve got a fair team here, we compete every single week and we’ve gone close today.
“There’s an argument to say we could have won that game, we get to golden-point and go down to twelve men and that makes it so tough.
“It was a poor decision by Mason but he knows that, we don’t need to tell him.
“Then you’re always going to have poor kick-pressure and they were pretty smart how they took the opportunity.
“I’m really proud of the boys and the effort tonight, we’ve got to learn lessons from it but we’re a pretty courageous team.
“Plenty come here and cave in but we’re not one of them which is pretty pleasing.”
Catalans coach Steve McNamara said: “I thought we played soft in the first half, we started poor, our defence was poor and Wakefield played at a faster speed than we did.
“Credit to us, we managed to turn that around and reverse that in the second half but we gave ourselves a lot to do.
“We carried the ball okay but we lost a lot of tackles. I was disappointed with how we played in the first half.
“It was smart from Luke Keary to set up for a drop-goal but he obviously spoke to Reimis Smith about running on the inside if the pressure came and he found his way to the tryline with a spectacular finish.
“I thought we deserved to win, Wakefield were better than us in the first half but we dominated the second.
“We had lots of tries and close decisions denied by the video ref, decisions which could have gone our way, and we showed great patience not to panic and finished very strongly.”
