Salford coach Paul Rowley refused to get carried away after his side romped to a 60-10 rout of miserable Huddersfield to bolster their Betfred Super League play-off hopes.
Ryan Brierley claimed a hat-trick as the Red Devils scored 10 tries and 10 goals against a Giants side that repeatedly gifted them penalties – a performance their interim head coach Luke Robinson branded “embarrassing”.
The result certainly helped Salford’s cause as they moved up to fourth in the table with four games remaining but – a week after a 26-0 loss to Leigh – Rowley warned there is still much hard work ahead.
“If you’d put a quid on for us to be at this point you’d be doing alright,” Rowley said. “But we take every week as it comes, we won’t be back-flipping our way out of the stadium.
“I think we all understand there’s twists and turns to come and all the teams are fighting like anything beneath us and we’ve got to play some teams ahead of us as well.
“So there’s twists and turns to come and you can’t predict the outcome but where we are at the minute we’re masters of our own destiny and that’s what we aspire to be.”
Even so, the big score was a welcome boost after a season in which Salford have missed other opportunities to record a statement victory.
“It doesn’t happen too often does it?” Rowley added. “After last week as well we definitely learned some lessons on how to control the tempo of the game and what was required and put our best foot forward in the opening 20 minutes.
“That provided us with enough energy to execute in the way we did and the way we can. We’ve got enough good players out there to do it. Huddersfield were off the pace as well and that obviously helped us but regardless we put our foot on the throat and came away with a good result.”
After Chris Atkin opened the scoring on his 100th Salford appearance, Brierley made the most of an early sin bin for Huddersfield’s Andre Savelio to score twice, and Salford never let Huddersfield regain any sort of composure.
Injuries hampered the visitors but more costly were needless penalties, and their heads dropped at the start of the second half.
“I thought we started actually OK in that first five minutes but from that moment on, the 75 minutes afterwards, I was embarrassed, it was embarrassing,” Robinson said.
“I don’t think Salford were that good. I spoke to ‘Rowls’ about that, I don’t think he thought they were amazing but we just pretty much gave them everything…
“I can take losing but I can’t take losing like that. In parts of the game I felt like we quit which is one of the most disrespectful things you can say to me as a player or as a person. I’ve never really quit and I don’t like to be a part of organisations or teams that quit.”
Text author: Ian Parker, PA
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