Salford Red Devils Ian Watson was ‘proud’ of his sides efforts against St Helens in the final game of the season after spending 45 minutes with twelve men.
Watson said: “I’m proud of our effort and I thought we had a really good dig – I thought in the opening exchanges we were absolutely outstanding.
“We’ve spoken over the past few weeks about getting our swagger back and we did with how we played moving the ball and being a footballing team. We did it against Huddersfield and last night in the first half particularly.
“We looked a really good team but overall I think today typified what we spoke about as a group that real grit how they backed each other up, how they worked for each other especially when we went down to 12 men.
“The grit in our defence was unbelievable we had to do about seven defensive goal-line shots to do and managed them really well. That typifies the spirit we’ve got in these players.
“We went down to 12, we didn’t panic and we worked really well together as one defensive line where you thought they’d be able to put more points on us – that’s a credit to our resilience.
Watson also spoke about the big decisions regarding Jordan Walne’s injury at the hands of Alex Walmsley and Ryan Lannon’s red card.
“If Liam Watts’ the other week is a sending off Alex Walmsley’s is probably a sending off but I don’t think he’s maliciously gone at it. I only got one glimpse of it on the big scree and I know he gets him flush because Jordan Walne couldn’t come back on and that made it more difficult for us with one less substitution.
“Ryan Lannon’s red is an example of a young kid getting frustrated and maybe if there had been a sin-bin on the back of the elbow maybe Lannon doesn’t do that but there was clear frustration there from a young lad. He’s done a dumb thing and he’ll learn from it and I know for a fact Lannon will be better from it.”
