Salford Red Devils 0 Hull KR 62 Match Report
The Salford Red Devils Reserves took the field, last Saturday, for their final home fixture of the season, to face Hull KR, for what was to be the fourth encounter between the two clubs in eight days, after, the two first teams had gone head-to-head two days earlier.
Once again, the composition of the side was of considerable significance with there being four, relatively equally sized groups, consisting of Salford open-age players, loan players from Swinton, Salford Academy players, and trialists.
Unbelievably, ready on the bench to take the field was one Jamie Pye, who, less than forty-eight hours before had been fronting it up for the first team in their above-mentioned Super League encounter with the current league leaders.
Injuries, however, deprived them of skipper Charlie McCurry and Lucas Coan, both of whom would have made a considerable difference to the side.
That all these players took some time to jell together in any way was of little surprise to anyone, and by the time that they began to do so, the Yorkshire visitors in front 0-22.
Credit to the Salford side, once they did begin to get some understanding between them by the end of the first quarter, they really matched up to their opponents for the remainder of the half, limiting them to just one score, and going set-to-set with them for the full twenty minutes.
Indeed, they went for as long as forty-three minutes – from the seventeenth to the sixtieth – conceding only two tries, in the thirty-third and the forty-sixth minutes, which was a quite remarkable achievement given the above context of the game.
Unfortunately, all their endeavours and minor successes were solely in their defence and sadly they had nothing to show for it on the scoreboard. In fact, the closest two occasions, on which they came to scoring, came towards the end of this period.
On 54 mins, they made an interception in their own half, but, despite travelling over fifty metres, were unable to make it to the try line before being caught from behind by a Robin’s speedster, and then, six minutes later, were denied from grounding the ball after having forced their way over the line.
That proved to be the end of their most encouraging resistance, as fatigue and injuries took their toll, and the last twenty minutes enabled Hull to cross for further tries.
Coach Stuart Wilkinson was full of praise for his team’s efforts:
“We were unlucky not to score because we matched the Robins so well for that middle period, and it would have been some reward for all the endeavour the lads put into the game.
As it was, it is best just to disregard the scoreboard, because the best players of all are at their very best, when they are faced with seemingly insurmountable problems.
“We had some of those in our ranks on Saturday with skipper for the day, Jimmy Shields being outstanding. So, too, was Sam Littler, who is really starting to show real promise, while Raffa van Osselaer saves us time and again at fullback.”
An away contest at Huddersfield in ten days’ time will bring their season to its conclusion.
