Tomkins isn't that good, he's just a cut above a lot of the chaff currently in Super League.

What concerned me most was Matt Parish on GMR after the game. He sounded not just like a man frustrated with what he saw, but completely frustrated with his entire situation. He's only been here a month ...

I think what people have got to remember is that the silly penalties we conceded were for infringements that Wigan were just as guilty of but did not get pulled for. Also Mr Hicks made life very hard for us by awarding those penalties when we had reached tackle 4 or 5. This meant we were constantly defending for two sets with the second one being on our own line. Admittedly our goal line defence is awful and Wigan were ruthless.

We were not god enough to win but the margin of victory for Wigan was artificially massaged by the ref. 8 out of 10 of their tries came directly after one of those penalties. What I want to know is why we get pulled more than any other team for doing the same things. Holding down, not square and hands in the play the ball was what got done for all game. Apparently Wigan were good little boys all day.

By half time they had made only one line break from their own half and that was on the stroke of half time. Slt would have been interesting to see how the game would have panned out without those dishonest penalties.

Well I could bring up the Wire result at the Willows but to be fair they have hammered most teams they have played this season and Salfords result at the Haliwell was indeed a good effort by the club, if totally unexpected.
However are you seriously trying to convince me that Salford purposely give teams 18 point start just so they can play catch up.I think most people would agree that if you 18 points down it is very difficult to get a result when you are playing teams from your own division,the fact you may have got close in the end is therefore irrelevant, yes you can look for the positives like well we nearly did it but then that sums Salford up " the nearly men".

I do hope for all the true salford fans that the stadium move proves to be a turning point but unless there is serious investment in the current squad (which is doubtful as the club has no spare money)I think it will be yet another season battling to either get the last 8th place or avoid the wooden spoon.

I'd take 8th spot next year.

Anyone who thinks once we move we will suddenly turn into world-beaters is a little far from the mark. We have made progress, albeit slow over the last 3 seasons. 8th spot is a realistic target for next year anything else will be ambitious.

I'll believe that when there are a queue of NRL clubs knocking on his door, to my knowledge that isn't happening. He has looked distinctly average when playing for England against Aus/NZ not to mention the bunch of has beens/never will be Exiles.

That is of co just my observation.

I think the reason we get penalised more than other teams for this, is because we struggle to keep up to the same pace as teams such as Wigan, so in a desperate attempt to slow the game down, we hold the player down for longer than we should. Add to this the fact that Wigan players were fighting to get up and play the ball quickly, it just gives the referee another excuse to give the penalty.

Really tried not to enter this conversation, but the current situation is precisely why we shouldn't have taken on a new coach when we were more than halfway through the season. When the confidence is up and we're on a role, the players have proven they can score tries. What they haven't done is shown an ability to defend and not get penalised for stupid infringements, when the pressure is on.

Now, thanks to four and a half years of poor coaching the problems are severely deep rooted. The main problem was McRae's lack of confidence in his own ability, a problem he passed on to the players. Then we had three seperate coaches wanting to do their own thing, and at least two with low standards. MP has a massive job to do now, he needs to make sure everyone buys into a theory of unity and establish some self-belief.

The theory of a seige mentality is not something I buy into, as it may work for the end of this season, but it won't last for an entire season of SL. My presonal opinion is we should be talking about achieving standards of excellence - sorry if that sounds like a group of buzz words - with a major emphasis on conditioning, speed of play and intensity.

One thing I've always liked about Leeds is the speed of their play, even this year without a particularly great pack they still manage to give most sides a good game. In one of their games against Warrington, Leeds played some superb rugby on the back of quick play balls. The speed of Leeds' play created broken field pocession for them, and space for their backs. Patten is particularly good in broken field and we need to find this for him, if he's to ever become the player that we signed.

A good post Lincolndevilsfan.

A lot of our defensive problems stem from fitness levels imo. MP can do very little about fitness levels this late on in the season. Poor fitness impacts on the speed of the game, your thought processes, and self-belief. Plugging gaps defensively with an unfit side is a lost cause. MP has already stated how unfit the side was, and players themselves have said how knackering the new training has been, even though MP said the sessions have not been that intensive in his opinion. Give him a pre-season and a fitter Salford side, and the gaps will slowly get plugged.

I make that our 6th SL game this season where we've conceded 50+ points, and I also make it the game where we conceded our 10,000th point in SL (total SL points conceded is 10,008 vs 6,421 points scored - if all my stats are correct)

For anyone interested here's how many games we have conceded 50+ points in each SL season (again according to my stats) -

1997 0
1998 0
1999 3 (1 at Home, 2 Away)
2000 5 (2 Home, 3 Away)
2001 6 (3 Home, 3 Away)
2002 2 (1 Home, 1 Away)
2004 1 (Away)
2005 3 (1 Home, 2 Away)
2006 0
2007 5 (1 Home, 3 Away, 1 at Cardiff)
2009 2 (both Away)
2010 5 (4 Away, 1 at Cardiff)
2011 6 (2 Home, 4 Away)

38 times in total

hey boys if we play as bad as we did last year and recently you can score six points on friday night and still win.....

I disagree reds89! We were not holding down any longer than Wigan were. my wife is a Wigan fan and I was sat amongst them yesterday and she said that there was nothing different in what the 2 teams were doing. We actually got penalised 3 times for hands in the ruck yet at one point in the second half Liam Farrell was stood up with a Salford player about to play the ball and he quite blatently had his hand on the ball while he pointed at who he was going to tackle. It was quite clear to me from 40 metres away and yet Mr Hicks could not from a mere 10 metres away. I don't claim that we are not doing this stuff... just that everyone else does it too!!! I watch SL on sky week in week out and am increasingly frustrated at the slowness of the play the ball and the interferance by all teams. Seems to me that refs only seem to be able to spot it when we do it!!!!