Salford Red Devils’ 17-man squad explained including why changes to cup group made

Salford Red Devils have officially named their squad for Friday night’s game against Castleford Tigers: but it contains just 17 players as the club continue to be bound by salary cap restrictions.

The Rugby Football League have reimposed restrictions upon the club after their failure to pay their players and staff for the month of February. That means Paul Rowley can only select £1.2million worth of talent from his squad value of circa £2million.

That led many to assume Rowley would pretty much only be able to select the squad he named to face Midlands Hurricanes in the Challenge Cup: and that assumption would have been right.

That squad was indeed valued to the limit of the restrictions meaning that officially, Salford couldn’t bring in any other players for this weekend who didn’t play that day – including the likes of captain Kallum Watkins and half-back Marc Sneyd.

But Love Rugby League has been told that Salford were given dispensation to make changes to that squad in order for the game to go ahead and for them to remain cap compliant due to several issues.

The first is player unavailability. Salford are without three players who played in that game against Midlands: Jayden Nikorima and Joe Shorrocks are suspended, while Brad Singleton and Ben Hellewell are understood to be carrying an injury.

As All Out Rugby League correctly reported on Wednesday morning, adding players who played against St Helens would result in them going onto the club’s salary cap value to the tune of £18,000: something Salford would be unable to afford at this moment in time.

Which left the club in a position where they had to request to the RFL that they made changes to the £1.2million squad, with five made to the 18-man group that faced Midlands.

Singleton, Nikorima, Hellewell, Shorrocks and Nathan Connell are out. In their place come senior players Chris Hill, Marc Sneyd, Kallum Watkins and youngster Harvey Wilson.

Whether this will now be the group Salford are bound to select should restrictions still be in place for next weekend’s Challenge Cup tie against Bradford remains to be seen.

But it explains why Salford were able to tweak their squad.

In terms of the players potentially refusing to play, Love Rugby League understands Salford’s playing group have been in constant communication with the club’s new CEO, Chris Irwin, about assurances over pay and are now open to the idea of taking to the field on Friday evening.

That explains why Salford were able to name the squad they did: but there are likely still some significant twists and turns to come over the next 48 hours in an ever-evolving situation.

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