Salford head coach Paul Rowley was full of praise for his players’ battling spirit following their narrow Betfred Challenge Cup quarter-final defeat against Catalans Dragons.
The financially-challenged club were behind by just two points at half-time and fought to the end of their 20-12 loss in Perpignan, leaving Rowley in admiration of his Red Devils.
He said: “To come here, after all we’ve gone through, and are still going through, to perform like that speaks volumes for the playing group.”
“We were still in it right until the final hooter against a top, top team.
“We lost our full-back Ryan Brierley just before kick-off which, added to all of our other selection difficulties for other reasons, made things even more challenging.”
He continued: “But every time you ask these players to perform they deliver, and I’m proud of them.
“Catalans have been a consistently top team for many, many years now and Steve McNamara has done a fantastic job since he took the reins here.
“As ever, they are very big, physical team who have lots of offloads, they dominate territory and possession in most of the games that I have seen them play and today was no different.”
Paul Rowley added: “They’ve got a vociferous and passionate support group so it was always going to be an almighty challenge, but we were up to it.
“Of course we’re disappointed we are out of the cup, but there are so many positives to take from this performance.”
McNamara called for improvement from the French outfit, despite advancing into the last four of the competition.
“Credit to Salford, they came here to play, but we need to be better than today and there is still a lot of improvement to come in us,” the Catalans head coach said.
The Dragons had to deal with an early injury for winger Nick Cotric and a sin-binning for Elliott Whitehead before scoring two early second-half tries to seal the game, although the Red Devils would not lie down until the final hooter.
“They stuck at it to the very end and we needed to be more dominant,” McNamara added.
“We lacked discipline in both attack and defence, and it’s something that we will be working very hard on.
“But we’re in the semi-final of the Challenge Cup and that is all that matters. This competition means a lot to this club and we will be doing our very best to reach our third final.
“We’ve got a lot more in us than we have shown so far this season and you can’t win anything at this stage, but this weekend we will be among just four teams who are just 80 minutes from a major final and that’s something to be proud of.”
The Red Devils will now turn their attention back to the Super League, as they will face Leeds Rhinos on Thursday 10 April – and will get a second chance at the Dragons on April 19.
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