Salford are ready for red-hot Wigan
DEVILS REINVIGORATED BY RETURN OF BROWN
WE’RE frustrated with the way we’ve started the season, but it’s a good sort of frustration if that makes sense?
Normally, if you’re playing terrible and you’re getting banjoed every week, you might panic and you’d be frustrated with players who aren’t putting the effort in.
But to be totally honest, I don’t think we’re far off at all.
It’s tiny little things where we’re letting ourselves down and it’s not a lack of effort - we’re doing more than we need to.
If I had to estimate, I’d say we’re doing 20 per cent more defending than the other team and working hard in every department, but it’s just not turning into points at the minute.
We’re not far off at all - a different bounce of the ball in certain games and we could have easily won.
Then we’d be four or six points better off than we are, but that’s just the way sport goes sometimes, we’re not getting those bounces.
After the two matches in terrible conditions at the AJ Bell Stadium, we’d hoped for far better weather in the south of France last weekend. But although it stayed dry, there was a gale force wind that really affected us in the first half.
Catalans won the toss and chose to have the win behind them.
They were kicking from inside their 10m line and it was going dead at the other end of the field, that’s how strong it was.
It was a massive positive for them and then over half-time it completely died down, so we didn’t get any advantage in the second half.
While the result didn’t go the way we’d have liked, it’s good to get away as a group and get to know each other better off the field.
We did the same when we went to Perpignan last year and then when we had a blank weekend later in the season, we went to Ireland for a few days.
After that, the only two games we lost were the Qualifying Play-off and the Grand Final.
We put it down to being totally together for those few days, you develop relationships and it definitely shows on the field.
It’s good to have Kevin Brown back from suspension. He’s a class player and one of his biggest attributes is his communication, he’s a general. I don’t want to knock Chris Atkin, because he was good when he filled in, but we have taken a massive step forward getting Kev back in.
Wigan are red hot at the moment and we know how much Jackson Hastings and Jake Bibby will want to have a big game against us when we host them here at the AJ Bell Stadium on Friday night, but we have Dan Sarginson and he’ll have a point to prove as well.
It’s going to be a tough game, but we’re looking forward to it and we need to start picking up two points - there’ll be no better way than against Wigan at home.