Steve McNamara believes referees are being placed in an uncompromised position by being made to travel to France with Catalans' opponents. James Child and the rest of the match officials were on Leeds Rhinos' chartered flight ahead of the semi-final contest before returning to the UK with the Rhinos following the game.
The match officials were the subject of abuse from the Catalans supporters, who threw drinks and objects in their direction after the final whistle of the Dragons' defeat to the Rhinos. Child had sin-binned three Catalans players and sent one off in a bad-tempered affair.
McNamara was keen to stress he was not aiming his comments in Child's direction and admitted his side's discipline had conspired against them as they bowed out of the play-offs. But he said it was unfair on the officials to put them in a position where they are in close contact with the travelling team either side of a game.
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"I need to be really careful because this isn't a crack at this game tonight," he started. "I get during Covid why that situation happened, but the amount of pressure those officials must be under, travelling on a private flight with a team with what is at stake.
"Please, I must restate this, this isn't a crack at James Child or Ben Thaler or any of the other officials who are involved there, they just shouldn't be put in that situation to start with because it's a no-win situation for them. They should not be put in it and everybody knows that. The flights are all open now.
"Because then people start asking questions like you ask me, you asked the question because you know that's the situation, they shouldn't be in that position to have to do that. We didn't deserve to win tonight based on what happened out there on the field, but jeez, it's common sense."
McNamara did question the decision to sin-bin Pearce the first time, with the influential halfback sent for ten minutes on the sidelines for running in at an incident. Catalans were in possession at the time and attacking Leeds' line, but ended up with the penalty going against them and losing a man.
"Frustration got the better of our players," he said. "The Mitchell Pearce one, the first one, there is a rule that if you run in and get involved you can get sin-binned but it's not been used all season, not used at all. And there are Leeds players who run in as well. So I don't understand how it's rolled out on a night like tonight.
"We'd been under pressure but we'd forced a repeat set, got field position, forced a drop out and then there's a penalty against us. Those situations lead to more and more frustration for our players. We didn't handle that well enough and in the last 20 minutes we could have got a way back into the game but discipline let us down."
McNamara also reacted to Rohan Smith's post-match comment where he claimed Sam Tomkins had dived in an incident involving Leeds forward Matt Prior. Prior's head appeared to make some contact with the Man of Steel, who dropped to the floor.
"I've got to be careful here, but not too careful, but Richie Myler did something similar a few weeks back and got a sin bin," McNamara said. "It's not exactly the same incident, don't get me wrong, but I think as coaches sometimes we pick and choose when we want to look at the incidents, but make of it what you want. I'm not going to go down that too much there."
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