That does not bode well for Rankin!
It's ok bringing in all these players who can do a job for us, and we do have the team to be in the top 6, but it's no good if we cannot keep them fit and healthy. This has been our problem for the last 2 seasons now, garbage conditioning and injury prevention. Our main target in the off season has got to be another Greg Brown type of conditioner. Where is Greg now, oh yes I remember Salford.

Rankin clearly not match fit- spending a bit of time stretching out during the game.

If you are referring to the 40/20's the winger usually drops back on either the 3rd or 4th tackle onwards and as Dobson had kicked virtually everything up to that point down the middle where is the FB supposed to be ??

McIntosh should have dropped back as Jerry does every week.

We played well and we're on top for 15/20 minutes until Seb got hurt and Mr B decided to play his hand when we didn't get the ball for 15 minutes due to his whistle and some fair kicking from a Salford 18pt blitz and even then Lui's try was a jammy rebound kick. We still pulled back for 18-10 at the half so I think you are going very OTT here Jools.

I didn't see Ferguson 2nd half either we had 6 players sat in the stand that would have started it could easily have been a 60pt blowout with the injuries and tackling we had to do but we hung in to end up only 16 pts behind get real it wasn't what we wanted but it wasn't that bad.

well the writing was on the wall when mcgillvary pulled out and then we lost ikahihifo eary on during the game! we started really well but salford got on top and put the game to bed early in the second half with that period they had, two 40/20's two tries!

the lads heads could have dropped but credit to them for digging in and scoring two tries, the last one that mcintosh scored was a beauty!

injury curse seems to have striked again

lost more today.

not too disheartened, salford are a good team and cant give them the amount of possession we did today with their attacking players.

on to next week now, big one to keep us in the top 8

aye mr greg brown.. strangely enough i think salford had a full team today too!!!

thats pretty much how i saw the game too, jools way OTT.

Greg certainly knows how to keep the players healthy and on the pitch.

Nope- not really referring to the 40/20s more his positioning at the try line- he didn't seem to be anticipating the plays very well at all-although saying that it is the fullbacks job to organise the defence and if he wanted the winger to drop back he needs to say- otherwise none could do or both!
To me this is the problem with sticking a new player in a key position. Rankin could have played on the wing and mackintosh at FB where he is more familiar.

Exactly, we lost our best 2 players, and the 2 we rely on most to make us ground.
Don't think we were that bad today, Salford are a good side who got on a roll, at times they had 3, 4 dummy runners near our line - hard to defend against that, though i thought our 1 on 1 tackling could have been better, not too disheartened by that showing, thought Rankin did well on debut too.

Need some bodies back for Friday, 2 points and I reckon we are safe in the top 8 and job done. We can then go into the Super 8's under no pressure and hopefully with a lot of players back.

Your final try was a real beauty. One of the best I've seen this year.