Ahead of Sunday’s Betfred Super League clash with Castleford Tigers at the Mend-A-Hose Jungle we take a look at the facts behind the fixture.
Head-to-head
Salford and Castleford have had a real share of the spoils over the last two seasons with The Red Devils coming away with three wins from six and The Tigers claiming the other three victories.
Ian Watson’s side were the first team to overcome Castleford in the 2017 Betfred Super League thanks to a late Gareth O’Brien drop-goal in March at the The Salford Stadium. However, the Red Devils lost back-to-back games against Castleford in the latter stages of last season.
Salford’s last victory at the Mend-A-Hose Jungle came back in 2016 as the Red Devils ran out convincing 32-16 winners – this was the Club’s first win at Castleford since 2004. Salford’s best run of results against Castleford in the Betfred Super League era came in 2004 when they won three consecutive games against the West Yorkshire side.
Try-Scoring
Salford and Castleford over the years has had some high-scoring affairs with seven of the last eight games having a combined score of 27 or more points.
This has allowed for some fairly frequent try-scoring which has seen at least one player grab at least a brace in each of the last eight meetings, also. Zak Hardaker, Greg Eden and Joel Monaghan all scored doubles for Castleford in this fixture last season while Ben Murdoch-Masila crossed twice in a 13-12 victory.
Junior Sa’u, Josh Griffin and Kevin Locke have all notched braces for Salford in the fixture since 2015 while Jake Webster, Denny Solomona and Ashley Gibson have all scored doubles for The Tigers. Solomona scored a brace twice in the fixture in this period. Justin Carney is the only man to score a brace for both Salford and Castleford in this time.
The fixture is also one for the backs with the forwards scoring just three of the last 24 tries in this fixture. Murdoch-Masila scored two of these while Paul McShane crossed for Castleford. There was a total of 13 different try-scorers in this fixture last season.
Milestones
Salford Red Devils back-rower Josh Jones is set to make his 150th Betfred Super League appearance if selected for Sunday’s game. Jones featured in the Betfred Super League on 97 occasions for St Helens and has now made 52 Betfred Super League appearances for Salford.
Castleford winger Greg Minikin could make his 100th career appearance this weekend. Minikin has played 49 games for The Tigers alongside seven dual-registration appearances for Batley whilst at Castleford. Minikin signed from York for whom he featured 43 times.
