Salford Red Devils Academy 16 Wigan Warriors Academy 48 Match Report
A thrilling start to last Saturday’s Elite Academy home fixture, against the Wigan Warriors, saw the Red Devils take the game by storm, by ratcheting up a 10-6 lead, in the first fifteen minutes – a position which must have shaken the visiting Warriors to the core.
So often, in the past, our youth teams have had to suffer considerably larger scorelines than the one above, and often without reply, but the opening quarter of this game was remarkable In that, not only did they match the Warriors, in every aspect of the game, they, on occasions bettered them.
It was as early as the third minute that Salford received the first penalty of the game, giving them a good attacking position from which second rower, Sam Littler, forced his way over, close enough to the posts for Dan Jenkinson to add on the extra two points, and Salford were off to the best start imaginable.
In fact, they came very close to doubling that score, three minutes later, when a grand break by stand-off Rhyley Hyde – who had so impressed the week before with the Reserves, at Wakefield – saw the supporting Fin Walker pulled down short, with the line in his sights.
It so often seems to happen these days, that a failure to score at one end leads to the double whammy of a try at the other, and that unfortunately was what happened on this occasion, with the Warriors building themselves a platform to gain an equalising try under the posts.
The following seven minutes saw both sides going set for set with each other in an arm wrestle in which the Red Devils more than matched their opponents, so much so that it was they, who broke the deadlock with left centre, Joe Griffiths, scoring in the corner from Hyde’s end-of-set kick to re-establish the lead, this time of four points – a lead they were able to hold for the following eight minutes.
Typical of the determined effort of the Salford defence during that spell, was their fine prevention, on 20 mins, of a Wigan try on the Reds’ left edge, which saw a volley of players bundle the winger into touch before he could get over the line.
Such excellent defence on the edges is so often lacking at this level, so one would have expected that this would have been an inspiration to the remainder of the team to continue in similar vein.
Surprisingly, this did not happen, and, two minutes later, some quite laxed tackling allowed the Warriors through, not only to take the lead, but to exploit some further quite soft tackling with tries on 25 and 29 minutes bringing a far from truly representative halftime scoreline of 10-24 – a score which they were to enhance by five points in the first minute of the second half.
The Red Devils did manage one further revival of their fortunes, when, on 47 minutes, they took advantage of a Wigan kick ricocheting from off an advancing Salford player to give them possession in good position.
From this, Hyde was able to wrong foot the Warriors’ defence with a change of direction of the attack and give an inside pass to fullback, Raffa van Osselaer, to score.
With Jenkinson’s second successful conversion attempt, bringing the sore to 16-28, there was hope that they had put themselves in the position of making a comeback. Sadly, this did not happen, and a, now, tiring defence was unable to prevent further tries on 56, 60, 71 and 77 minutes.
There was, however, much in the early parts of the game for coach, Danny Barton to be happy about:
“I was certainly pleased with the way we started, and that they stuck with the game plan during that time, which shows both that the game plan itself was working, and that they could deliver on it, but not for long enough. It is a more mental determination to stay in the fight for as long as it takes, that they need to develop, in order to be able to do so.
“There were periods of poor defence which let them down and I knew, then, that they were going to struggle to stay in contention. Once you start giving penalties away, as we did, you are just inviting teams in, to come and have a crack at your line. When you start trying to take short cuts, you are just giving them short cuts to score.”
They will have some time to work on these aspects before they take the field in another home game in three weeks’ time on the 21st June, when they will entertain Leigh Leopards.
SALFORD
Rafael Van Osselaer, Riley Mason, Sam Hill, Joe Griffiths, Connor Stubbs, Rhyley Hyde, Dan Jenkinson, Harrison Hope, Fin Walker, Matty Eden, Fin Buckley, Sam Littler, Rory Green
Substitutes: Jayden Tyson, Jacob Walker, Ellis Clarke, Lucas Roper
18th Man: Charlie Bailey
