‘I demand a

response and show a care factor,” said Stone.

“Regardless of what the position is in the table you’ve got to go out there and have some pride in your performance. But we were found wanting.

“I’m looking for some sort of response and making sure that doesn’t happen again.

“That’s what we’ll be working towards. I’d like to think it’s something we can get over quickly.

“If you are trying to build something, this is not something you want to see from your team that’s for sure.

“We let our guard down and have disappointed a lot of people at the club, especially our fans.”

Huddersfield kicked off still in with a mathematical chance of making the top four. But the equation clearly didn’t add up for Stone’s squad.

“We weren’t at the races,” he admitted. “Salford turned up with some real intent and they ran and tackled harder.

“We struggled to match that for pretty much the whole game. Salford marched us down the field and put us under pressure and controlled the ball well.

“We prepared pretty well but we were a bit gutted to lose to Castleford last week after competing pretty hard and maybe that took a bit out of us.

“We did better in the second half but full credit to the opposition, they played well. We made a couple of errors that led directly to tries.”

Salford coach Ian Watson hailed his team’s best display “for some time”.

Watson said: “I don’t think we have been as good as that in a game-plan for some time. The boys out there have done themselves proud. They gave it everything.

“I thought we won the energy battle. We are a team that like to play and I thought we did some