Life’s Grand for Reds supporters
HUNDREDS of Salford Red Devils fans queued from the early hours yesterday to get their hands on tickets for the biggest game in the rugby league club’s history.
Salford supporters began lining up at 5.30am and by the time the ticket office opened at 8am, more than 600 fans were waiting in line.
The Reds beat Wigan Warriors at the DW Stadium on Friday night to reach the Super League Grand Final for the first time, which takes place at Old Trafford on Saturday.
Huge queues snaked around the stadium and into the car park. Even a fastfood van was called in to sell hot drinks and breakfast sandwiches.
THE 2019 Betfred Super League season is the longest in the competition’s history, having begun back in January, and Salford have extended their campaign to the maximum in reaching Saturday’s Grand Final at Old Trafford.
A Great Britain tour – on which Ian Watson will be an assistant coach – and World Cup Nines will follow, but thoughts will soon turn to planning for next year, with preseason typically well under way long before Christmas.
But Salford’s preparations for this season, the most successful in their recent history after achieving a third-place regular season finish and maiden Grand Final appearance, can actually be traced back to the beginning of the previous year.
With former owner Marwan Koukash stepping away from the club, budgets had to be slashed and Watson revealed he, his coaching staff and director of rugby
Ian Blease were required to make short-term decisions with a view to upgrading their squad if and when possible.
Ultimately, the Red Devils found themselves in the Super 8 Qualifiers, but were able to bring in the likes of Jackson Hastings, Joey Lussick and Greg Burke to help them ease through that stage of the competition without any real threat of relegation.
“We rebuilt the team in the middle of the season last year, because we had to,” Watson explained. “We couldn’t get what we wanted to in the pre-season before, so we had to cherry-pick players who we thought could come in and give us a basic start to the season, which we did. “Because Marwan had left and players had been sold, it wasn’t the ideal situation, but there was no point in us being down on that, we had to think about going forward and doing it the right way – bringing players in who could get us some wins and put us in a position [to build from]. Then people like Jacko and Joey really kind of helped us towards the back end of the season when that quality became available.
“That enabled us to build this season on the back of that really, which gave us a good advantage coming into the season.”
Hastings and Lussick, team-mates in the reserve grade at Manly Sea Eagles, benefitted from the preexisting understanding between hooker and half-back, and by the time this year kicked off, these relationships had been established across the squad – all of whom had a point to prove.
“We have a group who are competitors,” said Watson. “We’ve tried to cherry-pick them over the last few years, getting winners out of good clubs, who people have probably thought they are kind of done.
“But to get another opportunity [in a Grand Final] with Salford will be one of the proudest moments of their careers.
“Myself and Martin Gleeson said before this season that this is one of the best groups of people we’ve recruited while we’ve been here.
“Gleese said that in the time he’d been at Salford – which is longer than me – he felt it was the best group they’d had as a playing side and they could really do something if the just held each other accountable and worked hard for each other.
“That was what we based everything around – the value of each other as a team-mate.”
We rebuilt the team in the middle of last year because we had to – we have a group who are competitors Ian Watson