General thoughts
Difficult one to process. We had a few rushes of blood, I guess, defensively that hurt us. But overall, I thought we defended very well. We played like a team in attack but didn't quite maintain possession enough to fully go on with it. But we played against a good team, they keep turning up and find a way to scramble. It was a decent game of footy overall, I thought.
Too many errors
It's a bit of personal discipline with the ball. Bentley felt like he got the ball down (for a try) that was an error. We had a short side with a forward pass and that probably was correctly called that one. Among all the others, you know, the crowd roared a lot for forward passes today. But the possession ones, where we lost the ball in the tackle. Those ones in the first half hurt us and we didn't apply enough pressure to Salford who made their opportunities count and executed well.
Ruck speed disappointment
You can't help but notice the crowd but I was asking about the speed of the ruck in the pre-season games and the reports back was everything was trending in the right direction and that's been confirmed in other correspondence I've had.
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I think our players understand momentum well so we don't always feel the need to hold down when the other time have earned the right to play the ball. We can still present a defensive line rather than the odd chance they do give a set restart. We'll see what happens in the meeting this week.
Sin bin
Very costly. It appeared, live, to me that it was a sin bin.
Jack Sinfield
He clashed heads, he's got a bit of a banged-up face but he's feeling fine in the dressing rooms. It was a decent hit to the face.
Options next week
We've some versatility there and some options in our roster. It's always about who is playing, not who isn't.
Positives
We found a good blend of moving the ball and carrying it direct. It was more in the contact that troubled us the most. Clearly we need to tidy that up. Defensively, I thought we handled a lot of what they threw at us but the penalties, in front of the post, giving those away, cost us. It's hard to understand sometimes.
Is it the manner of the errors rather than the volume that's hurting?
I've always thought it's how, where and on what tackle you make the error that is more critical than the volume of errors. I think plays lost is a more irrelevant statistic than errors.
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