Find it best to sleep on things and re watch in the morning. Overall it was a difficult game, the ruck speed was a lot slower than Thursday and there were a lot of stoppages and it was a bit of a mess at times.
I felt our discipline was a bit better, we made errors but overall it felt like less errors than at times last year.
I can see the basis of the spine and how we want to play, still some concerns over our goal line defence. I know people are desperate for the rush up defence but I don’t ever see Smith playing that way (I also think if the game wants a quicker ruck that rush up defence stops most of the time).
I don’t think Donaldson should be in the 17, unless we have significant injuries and no other option. I also think Bentley shouldn’t in near the 17 if everybody is fit.
I actually like goudemond, lots of effort without being flashy. Everybody bags Sangare but from what I could see he needed 3-4 Salford players to tackle him every time he ran the ball and be sucked the juice out of them. He is a big boy and although he doesn’t ‘bend the line’ much he is difficult to stop and helps with winning the energy battle.
I thought Frawley was nervous to start but got into the game and helped move us around, exactly what he is asked to do. Croft didn’t do much but was a threat.
I think it will take some time to get that spine working cohesively, we do have a lot of players wanting the ball, will take some time.
In conclusion, we won the game without being great. Players got some minutes and the spine got to play together. Salford had a plan to disrupt and slow it down, but we managed go get past it and we move on. If we win games without being great then I won’t complain that much.
