Rugby League – Super League: Tom Johnstone, successful integration

The least we can say is that Tom Johnstone didn’t take long to adapt to the good Catalan air. We knew all the talent of this winger, who arrived this summer from Wakefield, and who, since his debut in the English team, had scored a whopping 87 goals in 112 games. Stats even more incredible when you know how his 2021 and 2022 seasons were interrupted by various injuries and, in particular, a ruptured Achilles tendon.

But after five games in this 2023 Super League, the Dragons squad can rest easy: they were not wrong. Away from. During these five maiden successes, the English international winger (1st selection in 2018), scored no less than eight times, including three this Saturday, against Hull KR, in Gilbert-Brutus. The first two downs probably aren’t the most difficult he’s put up in his career. But he still needed to have the necessary boost of speed to conclude.

Also solid in defense

In the first, from the start of the game, he was perfect in support of Adam Keighran, author of an interception in the 10m culés and who crossed almost the entire field, before serving perfectly to Johnstone, therefore, who only had to flatten. The second, English owes only to itself. It was he who recovered a ball muddy by Hull’s attack on the ground. With no pressure, he was able to take the time to turn to the referee, to check that he had not seen any fouls, then lowered the gear to cover the 50m to in-goal. The third is more like the standards of the genre: a dive, at the end of the line, on their left wing, after a notable action by the Dragons, who, thanks to a few small fouls by an opponent exhausted by the intensity of the la Catalan defense, went up 100 m.

Tom Johnstone dealt with his stats on Saturday night. This is not to upset the public for Brutus, who is there, a new little love. But we also saw him in the first part, solid in defense, when he had to defend against British attacks. Author in particular of a save, just before the break, in a plate by the opposite band, he showed that in this area he was not clumsy either.
Five games, eight tries therefore for Tom Johnstone, perfectly integrated into his new colours, and to whom everything smiles or almost, as at the start of the season, his team.