Coach delighted as Sa’u is Salford star
DEVILS BOUNCE BACK TO EXTEND WARRINGTON’S MISERABLE START
SALFORD bounced back from the contentious defeat last time out to produce another fine performance and leave last year’s League Leaders’ Shield winners Warrington without a win in three Betfred Super League matches.
The Red Devils ran out 24-14 winners at the AJ Bell Stadium on Saturday – much to the delight of coach Ian Watson.
“It was a great response from the Leeds game,” said Watson.
“We spoke early in the week about the things we could control and the grit and determination we showed – again against a few rough calls, I felt – how we came through that was pleasing as a group and as a team.”
Junior Sa’u continued his impressive start to the season, opening the scoring for the Reds inside the first five minutes.
The Wolves struggled to get into the game and made a string of uncharacteristic handling errors. They finally got themselves on the scoreboard 25 minutes into the game in controversial circumstances.
Declan Patton knocked down a pass from Sa’u intended for Jake Bibby and referee Jack Smith initially awarded the scrum to Salford but, under direction from his touch judge, changed the decision to a Warrington penalty. From that set, Patton pushed up in support and was on hand to collect a superb offload and touch down.
The lead swapped hands again 10 minutes later when Sa’u palmed back a Michael Dobson high kick into the arms of George Griffin to score, but there was time for yet more controversy before half-time.
Gareth O’Brien looked to have broken through the Warrington defence, but was called back for a forward pass, much to the ire of the Salford faithful. On the back of that scrum, the visitors produced perhaps their best bit of attacking play of the half, Kevin Brown skipping across the Red Devils defence before finding Jack Hughes who crashed over. Patton’s conversion gave Wire a 10-8 half-time lead.
Salford emerged for the second period re-energised. Smart work from Kriss Brining around the ruck earned a penalty that marched his side down field and the young hooker stretched out from dummy half to re-take the lead less than two minutes after the break.
Soon after, it was Warrington’s turn to feel hard done to when Ryan Atkins raced onto a superb kick by Brown into open field, but was adjudged to have knocked-on in the act of grounding the ball.
Jack Johnson levelled for Wire just after the hour mark, catching a long pass from Kurt Gidley and diving over in the corner, but an O’Brien penalty gave the Red Devils the lead once more before Sa’u sealed the victory, diving onto Michael Dobson’s grubber kick. O’Brien added another penalty in the final minute.
■ SALFORD: O’Brien, G. Johnson, Welham, Sau, Bibby, Lui, Dobson, Tasi, Tomkins, Mossop, Jones, Griffin, Flanagan. Interchanges: Brining, Krasniqi, Kopczak, Lannon. ■ WARRINGTON: Gidley, J. Johnson, Evans, Atkins, Lineham, Brown, Patton, Cooper, Clark, Simms, Hughes, Savelio, Westerman. Interchanges: Dwyer, Blythe, Livett, Westwood.