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RETURNING Salford ace Ian Sibbit
Sib returns
Dave Lawrenson29/ 5/2008
SALFORD have confirmed that Ian Sibbit has recovered from his wrist injury and will replace Luke Adamson in the second row for the trip to Whitehaven tonight, Thursday, May 29, kick-off 7.30pm.
Adamson will either drop out of the team or take Adam Sidlow’s place on the bench as coach Shaun McRae plots to regain top spot from Halifax in National League One ‘as soon as possible’. And the rest of the side will be unchanged from the 30-12 Northern Rail Cup quarter-final win at Featherstone seven days earlier.
Goal kicking winger Andy Ballard is now the only Salford player unavailable through injury. He is recovering from a hernia operation and is expected to be passed fit for the home game with Sheffield the following week.
McRae said: "Sibbit has had a cortisone injection in his wrist and he is fit to play against Whitehaven.
"He’s a very experienced and consistent campaigner and he will come straight back into the side in place of Luke Adamson.
"Ian holds our left hand side really well both in attack and defence. He’s a player who always has plenty of minutes in him and it’s great to have him back.
"Ian has been one of our ever presents this season and not playing in the Featherstone game will have done him good.
"Craig Stapleton missed the previous week and he came back looking a lot fresher at Featherstone and I can see the same thing happening with Ian."
The Reds defeated Whitehaven 36-10 at the Willows last month and they lie seven places and 12 points ahead of the Cumbrian club in the table.
But, although Whitehaven will have to make do without the suspended Ryan McDonald and the injured Carl Rudd tonight, McRae believes that a difficult game lies in wait.
Reds boss McRae said: "Whitehaven are a very big and physical team and they are capable of playing extremely good rugby league, as they showed by recording a commanding win against Celtic Crusaders earlier in the season.
"We put in one of our best performances of the season when we played them at our place and it still took us 25 minutes to take control of the game.
"Our game plan on Thursday will be based around what worked well for us when we met them at the Willows.
"But the main thing I want from the players this week is for them to raise the intensity of our play. I was not happy with the way we performed against Featherstone last time out. We seemed to win that game despite playing at three-quarter pace.
"We also need to improve our control of the football and up our completion rate.
"We have been working on our option taking in attack this week too as we bombed quite a few tries in the second half against Featherstone."
Tonight’s game will be the third successive Salford match shown live on Sky Sports.
McRae said: "We seem to be on television more than Coronation Street.
"The extra exposure won’t do us any harm but we have just got to concentrate on trying to win games.
"Halifax overtook us at the top of the table recently and we want to get top spot back again as soon as possible."
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29/05/2008 at 16:03