Pressure overwhelmed Parish, claims Ratchford

Former Salford stand off Stefan Ratchford says the pressure may have been too much for his former coach Matt Parish.

Parish joined the City Reds last season after being an assistant to Ricky Stewart during the New South Wales’ State of Origin series loss to Queensland. 

But Ratchford believes Parish couldn’t handle the pressure that was on him and the Salford team.

Ratchford said: “It was a bit of a strange one with Matt coming over. He did six games and kind of disappeared again.

“I got on quite well with Matt. I think with it being his first head coach job he wasn’t sure how to speak to the media and handle the pressure after coming from State of Origin to us low down at the bottom of the league.

“The pressure was on him to try and get results and he didn’t know how to react to that I think.”

Ratchford has now joined Warrington Wolves where he aims to experience play off rugby, something he never got the opportunity to do at Salford. And the 23-year old believes the Wolves’ pre season plans will help emulate that goal.

Warrington travel to Australia where they will play South Sydney Rabbitohs in a pre season friendly on Saturday. The squad will train with the Rabbitohs, as well as join in with a Sydney Swans AFL session and train with life savers on a Sydney beach.

He said: “We know its not going to be a holiday its three weeks hard work preparing us for Super League.

“The NRL is a lot faster so if we’re playing an NRL side and the tempo is really high, coming back over here it’s going to benefit us. Obviously it’s not as intense and the tempo isn’t as high so we can blow teams off the park because they won’t be able to play with us.”