Frost bites Catalan clash

Referee Phil Bentham and match commissioner Gerry Kershaw took the decision, in conjunction with the coaches and chief executives from both clubs, following an inspection of the playing surface at Stade Gilbert Brutus.

"Referee Phil Bentham and match commissioner Gerry Kershaw, with both coaches Trent Robinson and Peter Gentle and both CEOs Christophe Jouffret and Tony Sutton, inspected the pitch and deemed the surface unplayable," said Catalans spokesman Yannick Rey.

The postponement means Leon Pryce' Dragons debut will be delayed until next weekend's home fixture with Castleford.

Great disappointment

Hull director of rugby Shaun McRae admitted the visitors were disappointed not to play the fixture after travelling all the way to France.

"There is a great disappointment from a lot of people right now, none more so than the players. They have gone through a rigorous preparation," he said.

"This is not an easy trip, we left our training ground shortly before 6am on Thursday to catch the plane over here and travelled for just under 12 hours before we got to the hotel.

"We had a good training session yesterday and were told we weren't allowed to train on the field as has been the case in previous years, but we understood that and went to a different ground.

"We were never told there was an issue with the ground whatsoever, we were just told that we couldn't train on it. We were also told that Catalan weren't training on there as well.

"Does that spark a bit of a concern? Maybe not, maybe it should have, it didn't for us because we knew that the London Broncos had played here, we knew that Wakefield had played here in pre-season so there was no reason whatsoever to suggest it was an unplayable surface or part of the ground was unplayable."