Pre-Season

Oh dear, if anyone was reading my Salford Tripping blog & has spent the last 6 months desperately wondering whether our season ended in disaster or triumph, well the former won through sadly. The truth is that the inevitable relegation duly arrived & was confirmed as I sat in front of this PC, listening to Radio Humberside's commentary of Hull KR's rout of their neighbours. At half-time in that game I got a text off Walshy to tell me that Shaun McRae was "trudging through Salford precinct", it seemed apt. I text back with the score & later discovered that Walshy darted out of Argos to find our coaching supremo & give him the news. He never found him.

Relegation at least gave us the opportunity to lose some deadwood & bad eggs that had collected in our camp & it surprised few that Luke Robinson was the 1st to jump ship as he posed happily for the cameras in a Huddersfield shirt while telling the assembled press that he would probably still have left if we'd stayed up (no doubt due to another clause in his contract). No surprise either when Andy Coley jumped ship to Wigan a few days later either, and both Coley & Robinson were roundly abused in various songs aired at the following games (though neither would wear the shirt again after relegation was confirmed).

Others followed post-season; amazingly both Finnigan and Haggerty will start Super League XIII with Bradford & Harlequins respectively. David Hodgson followed Robinson to Huddersfield (though unlike his team-mate with our best wishes). It was therefore ironic that Hodgson should suffer a serious pre-season injury when most Salford fans had their Robinson voodoo-dolls out. Then as Castleford were confirmed as our replacements Korkidas, Dorn & amazingly Edmonsson were handed Super League lifelines, though it would surprise few that Edmonsson would retire through injury before the season even commenced. Aaron, Aaron Moule & the mighty Buddha would retire & return to Australia.

The real story pre-season though was of the players who were willing to stay & play for the Reds. Malcolm Alker, Karl Fitzpatrick & Stuart Littler all turned down Super League offers to quickly re-enforce their desire to stay & help us back up. Others would sign up too; John Wilshere was easily our player of the nightmare season & his decision to stay delighted all Salford fans (except Bobby bizarrely), Paul Highton followed (which he confirmed to me in the bizarre setting of a Walkabout toilet) and a bulk of the squad was retained but without the big-time Charlies, sounded promising.

More surprising were some of the new signings. Robbie Paul, Paul White & Matt Gardner had all been bandied about as potential signings if we went down for a month or two so they surprised few if anyone. Craig Stapleton, however, definitely came out of left-field & I don't think I quite believed that he was coming over here to play National League rugby until I saw for myself pictures of him in training. We also plundered the financially-troubled Widnes side by snapping up Adam Sidlow & the hugely rated kid Richie Myler, while with only 1 overseas player available (Stapleton), the 'Italian' utility player Chris Borgese joined the 'Spanish' utility player James Jimenez on the plane from Australia. A truly multi-national squad was developing!

Reports from Jacksonville suggested that training was going great & a friendly draw in the group stage of the Northern Rail Cup meant that our first 6 games would be versus lower-league opposition. With that in mind, we were to play only 1 pre-season friendly; against the Super League Champions-elect ( no really, this year we're going to win it definitely, we're a massive club) Warrington Wolves. The playing surface at the Halliwell Jones was not conducive to the champagne rugby that the mighty Wolves will undoubtedly serve up for us this year and with 4 days to go to kick-off was deemed unfit so a late switch saw us playing at the Willows.

An early-ish start saw us in the Eccles Cross for a few discussing the early blows we'd suffered in the week leading up to the game. Firstly Robbie Paul had gone in for a back operation that would rule him out of the first 2 months & then 2 days before the 1st friendly new signing Damien Reed was jailed for a year for a vicious assault on a friend outside The Birdcage in Leeds (a court-case I've since discovered the club knew nothing about until he asked McRae for a reference).

The short tram journey took us to the Willows where we watched the 1st half of the Utd-Spurs cup match before entering the ground to see that Warrington had a full team out. At this point I feared the worst, even more so about 3 minutes in when Martin Gleeson ran through a weak Ratchford tackle to give the Wolves an early 6-0 lead. We responded well & were unlucky to have a Jimenez try ruled-out. The pressure built though & a nice angle from Littler was met by a smart pass from Wilshere to see the Horse dart over. Wilshere added the extras on the hooter & we went in level and very happy.

The introduction of Myler midway through the 1st period had made a big difference & it was fitting that 10 minutes into the 2nd half Myler chased through his own towering kick before outjumping Bridge & flicking the ball to Sidlow who raced the remaining 20 metres to put us in front. We maintained the pressure on the Woves & fittingly the impressive Big Phil Leuluai crashed through to extend our lead to 18-6.

Warrington then hit their straps for 10 minutes though & an Andy Bracek try was quickly followed when some great work by Anderson sent GB hooker Jon Clarke (whoever thought I'd be typing that in all seriousness) over by the sticks. Shortly afterwads Rauhihihihihi went over by the sticks & Warrington had the lead back. The game finished at 18-22 and we were perhaps unfortunate not to have won but a great hit-out & a good indicator of the potential in this squad.

Getting back in the Tavern we were able to see replays of the now infamous Sheff Utd balloon goal against Citeh which provoked huge laughter among us & we stopped in the Tav for a good few hours catching up on off-season events before heading to the Height to round off a good day out that got us all warmed up for the short trip to Rochdale.