THE ORIGINAL RED DEVILS

ROWLEY: “HE WAS THE SHINING STAR!”

Paul Rowley was full of praise for star centre, Nene Macdonald in his post-match press conference.

After completing a move to the club during the off-season, his long-anticipated home debut could not have gone much better, with a Man of the Match performance against Castleford Tigers.

His try on the stroke of half-time gave the Red Devils some breathing room and came from a moment of real quality from Marc Sneyd.

A high bomb on the last was charged down by Macdonald, who leapt high over Luke Hooley to grab the ball and touch down in some style.

Speaking post-match, his Head Coach says it’s something the PNG international has brought to the table since his arrival.

“We’ve spoke about challenging kicks more and I think Nene’s come into this group, and you kind of need someone to value something to make that contagious throughout your group, and Nene has definitely brought that,” Rowley began.

“What I would say is, probably when you look at the game, Nene, for me, was the shining star out there, that little bit of quality on the field.

“I think everybody worked hard, but I think he was different class and that try was the perfect example of that.”

On the performance as a whole, Rowley says a late Liam Horne try made the final exchanges very nerve-racking for those in attendance.

“Terry O’Connor has just said I look grey. I don’t know if you can feel grey, but I feel grey!” he joked.

“I thought we were really good at the start of the game and controlled all the ball really; it would be nice if we could hold the ball like that all the time.

“But Cas came back strong and scored a couple of tries on the back of what I thought were individual errors on our part, so we can fix that.

“I think collectively we were pretty good throughout. I thought our right edge was a little blunt in attack, but again, that can be fixed, we’ve got a lot of new additions in key positions.

He concluded: “I guess if we don’t polish the attack up, any wins will be hard-fought wins like that and close encounters, which is not good for the ticker, but we got their in the end.”

Watch Paul’s full post-match press conference by clicking below:

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