Sad to say that Wigan looked like a top team and Salford didn't. The Red Devils looked more like rabbits in the headlights. Wigan showed tremendous power and pace in almost every position and, to be honest, from the DW East stand I really only disagreed with three referee decisions while the penalty Morley gained later in the second half could easily have gone the other way. I'll watch the recording and may think otherwise, but generally that works the other way.

Wigan often changed the point of attack, which we seemed unable to deal with. While we dropped too many balls and gave away too many penalties.

With a 3 on 1 half way into the first half, with the line begging, Sau took the tackle. Unbelievable! While one of my least favourite players in rugby league, Gelling, was made to look like a world beater by weak and ineffective defence. Generally, we looked slow and lethargic against a side which had a two day shorter turn around than we did. The pack, on the whole, were dominated by the Wigan pack.

The short drop out which led to Wigan scoring involved, in my opinion, a trip on Chase, but generally, I didn't think Chase stepped up, and didn't do anything to find a chink in the brick wall which was Wigan's defensive line.

All of that meant that we gave them far too much room to play because we were too slow, or non existent moving up in defence.

Add to that two stupid scrum offences and you have a perfect recipe for being battered. Which we were!

Back to the drawing board?

And also, for the record, I was amazed that Evalds didn't go the full length. I don 't know if he was hurt beforehand, but I would never have thought he would have been caught by Charnley.

A great many of the culprits are on my sig below.

Good post, Red John, but

I doubt football allegiances have anything to do with it. Some people just see themselves/their club as victims regardless. I know a few people who don't even follow football who've acted like that about Salford. I think it's an inevitable part of being down the bottom for years on end. Supporters of all "smaller" clubs start to think that way across all sports. To continue the United analogy, look at the amount of people who've claimed they never get a decision at OT. It's a siege mentality that comes from supporting an unsuccessful club.

Then again, it's also a rugby league supporter trait to think that every official is turd and out to get you. Have a gander at the RL Meltdown account on Twitter...

Some great posting and some real perspective.

On a positive note I have seen larger numbers of Salford supporters having a pre/après match beer in new West Didsbury (Monton) which is a good thing. I don't know how this visibility has been reflected in your gates, but, there is certainly a little bit of a buzz going on as far as I can make out.

A strong finish this year rather than the season petering out would be good for your club and good for the league we need more strong teams for a better comp

I mentioned Untied because I think this was where it changed from being something the more deluded fans did into something that was almost club policy. It seems Alex Ferguson rarely saw United lose a game fairly, but only because of dark forces behind the scenes. Apologists would try to explain it with the anodyne "Fergie's mind games", when the real explanation - the one they never used - was "Ferguson's being a dick again". It makes me wonder if this was a tipping point and why we seem to see the conspiracies more often nowadays.

It happens across football (Arsene Wenger - "I did not see the incident"icon_wink.gif and sport (often "Salford only won because we were sh*t"icon_wink.gif. It's a modern day symptom of professional sport and the analysis, scrutiny and pressure people are under, not a symptom of supporting a particular club.