at the end of the day your 15,000 fans got dealt with of 200 Salford fans.

What I saw on Friday night reinforced my resolution not to travel away to watch Salford. This is partly because of the regularly hammerings we have had over the past 20 years but mostly because time and again we get hammered too by the match officials.

You can call it a seige mentaility if you like but the bottom line is far too often we end up on the fag end of the penalty count. I would not mind if we were dirty but we're not, it's the never ending last tackle offsides and holding down calls by incompetent and unfit officials which get to me when we are no more the offender than the opposition. Another all too frequent aspect often overlooked by supporters is where the penalties take place, the majority of those we get occur deep in our own half on the first or second tackle, invariably the opposition are awarded their's on half way on the last tackle.

Friday Saints deserved to win and of course as a Salford fan I am bound to be biaised but the ball steal. offside and knock on calls, not to mention a forward pass from dummy half that we were punished for whilst Roby managed to get away with for 80 minutes all leave a nasty taste in the mouth, not to mention the near decapitation of Gibson in the act of scoring a try that even the one eyed commentators were astonished went unpunished.

For the record in 27 matches last season we had the worst of the penalty count in 22 matches and the unedifying sight of the officials awarding us 4 penalties in the last 2 minutes to try to make the count look more even when the damage has been done fools no-one.

Expect nothing but the same on Sunday where I expect Widnes to be given every chance to win the match - but then maybe I am just cynical, or maybe I am a Realist.

I really could not have put it better if I tried.

You named yourself a realist with these scrutinies. Your world's seemingly rosy. So every referee must have a prejudiced agenda against us. So why atttend games whatsoever

Your efforts at demotivation appear to be working.
The massive impact by Luke Adamson was reported by this weeks Rugby League Express as the highest tackle count of any player on the field at 47.

Excellent post,The Realist,
A thread on the VT is also alluding to the PTB's not being from the mark where Salford are concerned etc.