Paul Rowley felt nothing but pride about his team’s performance in Round 5.
Despite a stellar showing against the world champions, Wigan Warriors, late tries from Jake Wardle and Bevan French stole a huge two points from Salford’s grasp.
Sam Stone and Tim Lafai had powered the Red Devils into a two-point lead, but with five minutes remaining, a mix-up from a short drop-out turned the tide.
Speaking in his post-match press conference, our Head Coach had nothing but good things to say about his team, who – with a lot of pre-match disruption – had gone toe-to-toe with a world-class outfit.
“It was a good game, it kept everybody on the edge of their seats for the full 80 minutes. We didn’t like the ending of it and I thought we were masters of our own downfall in that respect,” Rowley said.
“People keep asking me you must be proud of your players; well I’m always proud of our players, but we don’t take losing lightly.”
The effort and application of the players was never in question, but the ambition of this squad is to compete for trophies, so to lose a game so late on was massively disappointing.
Rowley continued to explain why that feeling is a good thing and how it highlights the competitive nature of his squad.
“We don’t sit here and feel like it’s good enough to be in a game with Wigan, we want to beat Wigan, it’s as simple as that,” the 49-year-old explained.
“It probably shows their competitive nature, and I speak on behalf of the lads when I say that is their competitive nature, and what they’re about, which is a great trait.
“I want them to be disappointed. We are, all the staff are, but we recognise it was a good effort, we had a lot of disruption and change in personnel pre-game and, as always, they put a shift in, and the game was there for us to win.”
Click below to watch Rowley’s post-match thoughts in full:
