A fifteen-minute period at the start of the match, during which the Red Devils were forced to play with depleted numbers, had a considerable impact on a game, which most travelling Salford fans had felt was well within their team’s ability to win.
The importance of keeping a full thirteen on the field throughout the whole game has been commented upon on a number of occasions, recently, and the Red Devils have benefitted more than once from other teams having been reduced to twelve by the sinbinning of an over-zealous opponent.
Salford’s loss, however, of not one, but two players, Ethan Ryan, followed by Brad Singleton five minutes later, was far more serious with the overlapping five-minute period being spent with only eleven of them left on the field.
In fairness, those eleven performed most valiantly, rendering the Leopards scoreless right through to within a minute of Ryan’s return, and keeping their line intact for the remainder of the half. The reserves of energy that this must have drained from them, though, can only be imagined, and weighed in relation to events in the later stages of the game.
Not that they had got off to the greatest of starts, with their first two sets ending earlier than might have been expected, and Leigh gaining possession in good field position. Marc Sneyd’s short, low kick towards touch, on the fourth tackle of the game, was taken quite easily by Brand, and then Ryan Brierley’s pass from the ground on the third tackle of Salford’s next set was penalised. Tellingly, the next time Salford touched the ball was to take the kick-off from Leigh’s opening try, under the posts.
Despite all this, twelve points is not a winning lead, and there was ample time for the Reds to have overtaken it, as they had done against Leeds, a fortnight before. Certainly, the last ten minutes of the half saw them put considerable pressure on the Leopards’ line, and indeed they came close to scoring on 37 minutes, but the video referee upheld the on-field decision of no try. Shane Wright was adjudged to have propelled the ball forward as he was tackled just short of the line thus nullifying Tim Lafai’s subsequent grounding of it, in the in-goal area.
Had the Salford players been rewarded for their efforts, at this point, it might well have led to a more memorable second half, but apart from a penalty goal extending Leigh’s lead, the greater part saw a stalemate as each side sought to gain dominance, broken in the last eight minutes by two further Leigh scores.
