Head Coach Ian Watson gave his thoughts following Salford’s narrow defeat against Wigan Warriors at the The Salford Stadium.
On the game…
Massively disappointed. We seemed to have a performance at Warrington and put ourselves in a strong position. When we want to put pressure on the teams above, we inflict it on ourselves.
The way we started the game with the errors, kicking out to give them field position and they get a 14-0 lead.
We come in at half time at 14-6 and we were happy to come in at 14-6 because then we could regroup. I thought we got ourselves back into a position to win the game.
Five minutes out, we should be seeing the game out but errors have come and bitten us again.
On the back, it’s something we need to tidy up but some of it is individual concentration and a bit of smarts.
It would’ve been a great Easter if we had picked off Warrington and then picked off Wigan.
We would’ve been putting pressure on the top teams to compete at the top end of the table which is where we want to be.
On upcoming games…
This weekend’s game is going to be a massive one now and we’ve got a good run of games coming up. We’ve got London, Leeds, Hull KR in the Challenge Cup, Saints and Hull KR again at Magic.
It’s a massive run of games so we’ve got to approach the games like we did against Warrington where we were completing sets and being patient in attack and built pressure on the team.
Today was all over the place which might have something to do with the changes on the back of Easter weekend.
On Joey Lussick…
He’s been great and he’s played a lot of game time for us this year, along with 80-minute appearances as well.
Over the Easter period with two games over four days, he’s never done that before, so we tried to be smart and play him 60 minutes against Warrington and started Logan against Wigan. Since he came on for us, I thought he did really well.
On injuries…
Theres a few players who have been carrying. We would’ve loved to have played Rob Lui against Wigan but history shows us that we’ve had issues after Easter.
He had a really tight hamstring for the last 15 minutes of the game against Warrington so we took it out of his hands because we can’t afford to lose any players.
Our back field’s been really good apart from the last two errors and consistent throughout the season and it takes a lot of workload off the middle as well so they can just focus on the defensive set. They do share the workload out really well.
With Josh Wood coming back and having two short spells against Warrington and Rochdale and him being able to play half-back today, it takes it away from the sting a little bit.
Although, he had a few one on ones with Greenwood today but it takes him out of that battle in the middle of the field so we can build him week on week. Hopefully, we can get Woody back fully 100%.
On Saturday’s game…
Every game is a big game for us and we want to win every game. London’s no different.
We need to treat them with the same level of respect as we treated them when they came down here because on their own turf, they’ve shown that they can turn a few teams over.
We got caught with that on the back end of last year as well.
We need to go there fully aware of what threats they pose but make sure we tidy a few things up as well.
