Saints stroll to 52-6 victory over Salford

St Helens will head into next week’s World Club Challenge on the back of an unbeaten start to the Super League season after a 52-6 win over Salford.

Keiron Cunningham’s side were always in command but didn’t need to be at their best to beat the lacklustre Red Devils.

Saints had to defend for much of the opening 15 minutes but still managed to open the scoring through Mark Percival.

Their opposition, who showed encouraging signs in last week’s season opener against Warrington, showed little composure in either defence or attack.

Salford soon trailed 14-0 thanks to tries from Jordan Turner and Joe Greenwood, a youngster who has had a great start to the new campaign. 

The Red Devils were eventually dealt some luck when Tommy Makinson’s kick bounced kindly for Ben Jones Bishop who showed incredible pace to score a long range try on half an hour.

But a treble Saints substitution held off a revival as Luke Thompson powered over from Jon Wilkin’s shortball for a 20-6 half time lead.

A Salford mistake in the first set of the second-half, from which Makinson grabbed Saints’ fifth try, epitomised an erroneous performance. 

Gareth Hock was lucky to remain on the field after using his knees in a tackle but from the resulting penalty another testing bomb from Wilkin resulted in Percival’s second.

Louis McCarthy-Scarsbrook stormed over to make it 36-6 but for the home side things went from bad to worse as Hock was sin binned for a second use of the knee.

Cunningham was able to bring off a number of key players in the closing stages whilst Turner, Greenwood and Savellio each scored to finish off the job.