Salford Red Devils Head Coach Ian Watson was ‘really pleased’ with his sides performance despite falling to a 18-6 defeat at Warrington in their second pre-season friendly.
Robert Lui had given Salford the lead but tries from Joe Philbin, Stefan Ratchford and Ryan Atkins meant Warrington came away with the victory but Watson feels it was exactly what his side needed prior to their Betfred Super League opener against Wigan in two weeks time.
Watson said: “We’re really pleased to be fair.
“I thought it was exactly what we needed at this time going up against an international pack if you like to kind of test us as to where we were physically and in the first half was outstanding for us.
“Second half we started to rotate some of our other guys who needed the game time to see whether they can play kind of Super League level as well.
“Warrington kept flipping their main middles on in short spells which was good for us because it challenged us and like I say we’ll have got a load out of that.”
Watson was impressed with his sides resilience in defence but admits there are things to work on before they take on Wigan on Friday 2nd February at the The Salford Stadium.
Watson said: “Yeah we were very good defensively.
“We’d spoken in the week how we wanted to set out for this game and the start of the game was really important for us and the first half overall as well.
“We kind of made some changes on the backend of that so what we kind of set out to do we got there.
“There are little things we will need to work on and pick on I thought Warrington were really good in the second half in kind of where they started and finished the sets and that’s something that some of our younger guys will have to learn.”
Ian Watson’s full press conference will be available on Salford Red Devils TV tomorrow.
