Watson proud of Salford’s strong defence

Salford coach Ian Watson has praised his team’s work in defence that helped them to their fifth win of the season.

The Red Devils were impressive holding out Leeds for 73 minutes in their grinding 14-10 win on Saturday evening.

Salford showed great line speed and commitment to frustrate the Rhinos, who enjoyed many repeat sets on their try-line.

“It was brilliant,” he said.

“We’ve worked hard on it to be fair. It’s an area we’ve looked at and we wanted to build our game on.

“We looked at a lot of teams that have played against Leeds recently and we kind of thought if we came up with a way that if we executed it, and we defended that way, we would stop them from scoring.

“The boys need all the credit there as they’ve seen it, we’ve shown them, they’ve put it into action and done really well.”

Fullback Gareth O’Brien caught the eye with a try-saving tackle on Kallum Watkins in the second half.

“Gareth, he was unbelievable,” Watson enthused.

“We spoke with Gaz in the week. He’s really stepped up for us and he’s adamant that he [Keith Galloway] didn’t get that ball down on the first try.”