T'Other Side: Catalans Dragons

    

Head Coach: Steve McNamara

 

After retiring as a player at Huddersfield Giants, Steve McNamara joined the coaching staff at Bradford Bulls for the 2004 season and took their Academy team to Grand Final success in his first year. When Brian Noble left to take over at Wigan, Steve was promoted to head coach in April 2006. His time in that position saw a decline in Bradford Bulls achievements but despite that he was appointed as part-time head coach of the England team in April 2010 and then was upgraded to full-time for England in July and he left Bradford. He remained the England coach until 2015.

Whilst still the England coach, he joined the coaching staff at Sydney Roosters in 2014.

In July 2017 he was appointed to the head coach position at Catalans and has been there ever since and in 2021 they won the League Leaders Shield and two years later the Challenge Cup.

Born in Hull he made his first grade début playing for Hull FC in 1989 and transferred to Bradford in 1996. Next, he joined Wakefield in 2000, but they got into major financial difficulties which resulted in them terminating the contracts of all their players over the age of 24 which included him.

He finished his playing career at Huddersfield Giants for the four seasons fr4om 2001 until 2004.

McNamara also played for Great Britain U21, Great Britain and England.

 

 

 

Captain: Benjamin Garcia

 

Benjamin Garcia has been at Catalans Dragons almost ever since he made his début during the 2013 season. The brief exception was during the first half of the 2016 when he played 9 games for the Penrith Panthers NSW cup team.

Most of his games have been at loose forward but recently he has taken over the hooker position and was handed the number 9 shirt this year. So far, he has played 251 games for Catalans and scored 41 tries.

He has played 16 times for the French national team, 9 of which were in the World Cups of 2013, 2017 and 2022.

 

 

Dual Registration

 

In recent years Catalans have had a dual reg agreement with Toulouse but their has been no announcement for 2025.

 

 

The Fev Connection

 

Inevitably there have been very few players who have played for both Fev and Catalans and this year there are no players in the Catalans squad who have ever played for Fev.

Mathieu Cozza (loose forward or prop) made his début with Catalans in 2021 and in 2022, as well as playing for Catalans, he had a loan spell with Barrow Raiders. He played 10 times for Catalans.

In 2023 he signed for Fev and during his one season at Rovers he played 22 games and scored 2 tries. He joined Wakefield in 2024 and is still with them in 2025. 

Rémy Marginet (halfback) started out with St. Estève, Catalans reserve team, in 2007 and moved up to the Dragons first team squad in 2011 and played just two games for them. In 2014 he joined Palau Broncos and Fev signed him for 2015. At Fev he played 15 times, scored 7 tries, kicked 12 goals and 2 drop goals for a total of 54 points.

In July 2015 he returned to St Estève and has since played for Lézignan, Sheffield Eagles and Newcastle Thunder.