Salford grateful for first week off

Salford coach Ian Watson will be hoping the enforced rest will help re-energise his side in the race for the Super League play-offs.

After reaching the Challenge Cup semi-finals, the Red Devils are yet to have a break this season and their play-off bid has derailed in recent weeks.

They have lost their opening three games in Super 8s, but with four to play can still break the top four.

Watson said: “We trained really hard during pre-season because we didn’t want to be in the Million Pound Game again.

“That was a big focus for us and it’s probably something for me to learn from as we absolutely put our guys under the pump.

“Other teams have had weeks off to freshen up and to be honest some of our guys are probably mentally beat at the moment as well.

“This week off is going to be good for us, we need to find a balance between training and freshening people up mentally and physically as well.

“Hopefully it’ll give us time to get a couple of players back too and get some experience back in the side.

“You look at Wigan now, they’ve got a full strength team back and they’re on the up, whereas earlier in the season they really struggled without their main guys. 

“We worked really hard to make sure we were where we wanted, which was the top 8 or the top 6 if we could. We did better than that and got top four, but now we need to kick on.

“I’d rather be sat here than where Warrington and Leigh and all them are sat, that’s a different world altogether, that’s a complete different pressure which we found out last year.”