By the way Catalans are not an expansion team they are a contraction team.

Not saying other recent finals have been quality so a nothing point really. Doesn’t need to be lots of tries to make a quality game. You’ve really come up with one area of one teams performance to say the game was great, nothing on Warrington. One team defending well isn’t enough on its own to make a game great and their defence wasn’t even as good as made out. They had 26 missed tackles by HT, god knows what it was at FT but will have been way too high for the praise it’s getting. They were let off by poor opposition. Roberts make a break downfield in the first half on the first tackle instead of holding on against a scattered defence he tries a wonder ball and it’s ruled forward. Gigot failed with a high ball and Warrington think it’s a free play and mess it up. Both of those are a combination of Catalans failures and Warrington messing up in capitalising. Wire should have scored through Lineham but a Warrington runner makes a sloppy error of running to the outside shoulder instead of inside shoulder of the defender, harsh rule but one that professionals should know not to do. Lineham trying slide over from 6/7m our first tackle again sloppy when he should e cut back inside. Westwood could’ve scored but again poor execution of the pass. Numerous last tackle plays where the ball was thrown behind Brown or around his head costing him time to get a better kick away when near Catalans line.

For all the talk of Catalans defence being good, any team whose composure was higher than Warrington’s which was about a 1 out of 10 would’ve won. If Catalans defence was so good why did Warrington have so many chances, more so than them. Especially considering completion rates which should’ve seen Catalans boss the 2nd half as they held onto the ball which resulted in Warrington having to do more defending equalling more fatigue and starting sets in poorer positions

Congratulations to Catalan for their victory on Saturday, thoroughly deserved and what a great turnaround by McNamara and the side .It's difficult to believe that they are the same side that lost 8 from 9 games at the start of the season.

As a neutral, ti was an excellent game of RL, with Catalan dominating the early exchanges and Wire coming back strongly at the end and it looked for a while that we may have a draw, with Wire finishing strongly (apart from a bit of composure when it really mattered).
Gigot was superb but, I would have given Mcillorum the mom, he was superb.

The attendance overall was very poor for a showpiece event but, given the short time frame between the semi's and the final and with Catalan never likely to bring 10/15000 fans, this was always going to be the case.

I think it's time to accept that the Cup Final is no longer the major showpiece event that it once was and find a new strategy fo filing the ground, either by working with ALL clubs to sell more tickets in advance or possibly moving the date of the final, although this is no guarantee of changing the numbers attending the final.

Apart from having a new name on the trophy, which is always a good thing, the increased media exposure of having Les Cats winning has been excellent, something that we haven't seen for a number of years and it makes a change to be getting positive exposure for the sport form some quarters, where RL is usually sneered upon.

Great game and well done Catalan.

By the way. Apparently now the RFL ensured that Catalans won. Seriously, if you want a laugh, join the barmy army Warrington page on face book. It’s hilarious

Regards

King James

OR for a more balanced view, folk might want to look at this thread and visit our own board on here? Most saying that we had chances at the end to pinch an undeserving win and that the opposition played better than we did, but, yes get on facebook and knock yourself out.

Facebook/Twitter/Instagram comments sections are where the dullards of society dwell. The fact two people in this thread have given importance to Wire fans on Facebook comments sections says more about the two posters than it does the wider Warrington support.

Bit late to the party, but I thought it was a great game - very enjoyable for the neutral, and a fantastic story that Catalans lifted the Cup; full credit to the coach for picking up a chaotic, ragtag bunch off ill-disciplined eejits and transforming not just their play, but their attitude - which is much more difficult.

It looked to me that Catalans plan was to compress Wire, stop them getting it wide, and ram it down the middle - and their forwards did a brilliant job of executing that; made Drinkwater and a few others redundant for large parts of the game, but it was very effective - and Tony Gigot was majestic - he's an outstanding player.

Lovely stuff - attendance aside, but one would hope and expect that in having a team from overseas involved in the comp, the RFL would have planned for the reality that they simply won't bring as many fans, no matter what initiatives and marketing expertise the gobes of RLFans bring to bear.

I resemble that remark...