Salford Red Devils look to bounce back from the ‘disappointment’ of season opener

Salford Red Devils face Hull FC on Saturday as they look to bounce back from the ‘disappointment’ of losing their season opener away to St Helens. 

However, head coach Richard Marshall is under no illusions that Hull will be a walkover and is expecting another challenging match on Saturday afternoon.

He said: “Every week you have a look at the opposition, obviously we’re only one game in, they’ve got a new coach there and a couple of new ideas.

“As a club, they are always a really tough opponent to play against but at the same time, yes we have looked at some of the areas we want to improve on as a team.

“We feel if we can keep the ball long enough and we don’t make them errors, we’ll be able to sustain some pressure and put Hull under pressure with our kicking game.”

📋 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗡𝗘𝗪𝗦!

👥 Richard Marshall has named his 21-man squad for our @Betfred #SuperLeague clash with @hullfcofficial this Saturday! 👇

💪 #TogetherStronger pic.twitter.com/kxYG95BGFw

— Salford Red Devils 👹 (@SalfordDevils) April 1, 2021

Despite the disappointment of the St Helens defeat last Friday, Marshall believes he has a great competition for places and so training well is key to keeping a place in the starting 13.

He said: “I’m not into names or how many appearances you’ve made or where you come from, if you work hard in training, you get a shot, and at the same time if you don’t perform well on the weekend, then somebody else will.

“At the moment we’ve got a decent squad so everyone is on their toes within our squad and it makes my job a little bit more enviable in terms of picking a 17 each and every week.”

Reflecting on the defeat in their season opener, Marshall believed that St Helens looked the most intense side out of all the teams on the opening weekend of the season.

He said: “They did, they looked clinical, they obviously didn’t make as many errors as ourselves but at the same time we were in the fight.

“Obviously they had a couple of late scores and it blew out the score, I don’t think it was a fair reflection of our efforts on the day, I thought we did a real good job on the whole.”

Marshall also thinks that St Helens are a benchmark for how clinical his side needs to be for the remainder of the season.

He said: “I think they probably are a benchmark for the competition but at the same time, we want to improve, we want to match teams like St Helens and all the teams at the top of the competition.”