Salford fans will never be defeated or deflated by the old farts at the RFL. After another turbulent week in the history of Salford Reds, this was a time when the fans and their team, and anyone who cares about our great team, had to pull together as one.
The pain of the six point deduction was not shown by the team, and no matter how many points the RFL take off us they will never break our spirit. We started the match bottom of the table but this great win takes us above Huddersfield and, it gives me great pleasure as a Salford fan, above last season's treble winners Leeds who are now bottom.
Rovers beat Salford 44-30 at Craven Park in March and went into the clash with two wins in their last three league matches at Leeds and Castleford. But the impressive away wins were sandwiched by a 40-0 home thrashing by Catalans followed by the 36-22 Challenge Cup defeat by part-timers Oldham.
Salford welcomed back skipper Tommy Lee after a knee injury, and went ahead after seven minutes with slick handling by Lui and Ben Murdoch-Masila, sending Sa'u over but Dobson missed the straightforward conversion. Hull KR were still recovering when a well-rehearsed move saw Dobson slip an inside pass to Gareth O'Brien who sent Lui darting over and this time Dobson made no mistake with the kick.
Salford were in rampaging form and grabbed a third try after 15 minutes with Evalds doing well to squeeze over in the corner after more impressive handling by O'Brien and Griffin. O'Brien booted the touch line conversion to make it 16-0 with Rovers struggling to stem the flow. But a mistake by Logan Tomkins gifted Maurice Blair their first try when the hooker fumbled Albert Kelly's grubber kick, with Sio landing the goal.
Dobson almost created another try against his old club with a sidestepping run through the Rovers defence but was stopped by desperate defending. Salford suffered a blow with Justin Carney going off injured but then George Griffin bulldozed his way over to extend the lead to 22-6. The Red Devils were on fire with Dobson and O'Brien again linking up to send Jones over with O'Brien's goal making it 28-6 at the break.
Carney returned to the action before Rovers notched their second try with Kelly's high kick causing problems in the Salford defence and Thornley touched down against his old club to cut the gap to 28-12. Mitch Allgood lacked support on a surging run as Rovers piled on the pressure before an electrifying Carney run cleared the danger. Lui set up Sa'u for his second try on the hour to make it 32-12 before a long-range Sio try for Rovers. But Sio was injured going over the line and forced to quit before Salford went down to 12 men with Tomkins sin binned.
Hull KR took advantage, for Minns to go over in the corner but any hopes of a comeback were dashed when Sa'u collected Lui's neat kick to complete his hat-trick.
Minns went over for his second try for Rovers to cut the deficit to 38-26. The try-feast continued with Lui grabbing Salford's eighth from O'Brien's pass three minutes from time. Final score 44-26.
Sa'u, who grabbed a hat-trick in last week's defeat at Catalans, notched another treble to take his season's tally to ten, and this was a morale-boosting win before Saturday's Challenge Cup trip to Castleford.
After the match I spoke with two fans, Mike Ward from Broughton who said `Roll on next week when we play Castleford away; if ever a team name was on the trophy it is us...No-one likes us we don't care'. When I asked him about the game he said `A win is a win, and at least we ain't bottom'.
I then asked Dennis Robbins Riley from Weaste his thoughts on the game. He said `Salford came out showing their mettle, it is games like this we must win and I was proud of the lads...I cannot wait for next week. Let's take a big support up to Castleford, and give the RFL something to think about'...
I personally think if Salford did get to Wembley the RFL would move it for one game only to Oldham...
• In other news, Salford City FC won promotion for the second season in a row with a comeback 3-2 victory over Workington in the Northern Premier League play-off. Next season they will play in the National League North, two leagues away from the Football League proper.
Salford City FC have banned print issues of the Salford Star being placed in the Moor Lane bar area, so we don't feel compelled to do a glowing report on the club's progress.
* Main photo shows Ben Masila, Junior Sa'u, Justin Carney and Stefan
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(3).jpeg)
.png)
(1).JPG)
