Browse Sections

• Salford City Reds
• Local football
• Local cricket

Celtic Crusaders 20 Salford City Reds 10

David Lawrenson
28/ 8/2008

SALFORD well and truly fluffed their lines in Saturday’s dress rehearsal for the play-offs.

And the result, which represented only Salford’s second defeat of the League One season, will give Celtic a huge psychological boost for the forthcoming Grand Final Eliminator between the two sides.

True, Salford will have home advantage in the serious stuff, unlike on Saturday when they decided to make the long journey to Bridgend on the day of the game.

And Celtic had much more to play for at the weekend. They needed to win to be certain of taking part in the Grand Final Eliminator while Salford had already booked their place in that game as minor premiership winners.

But the manor of Salford’s defeat is still a cause for concern.

In the build up to the match, head coach Shaun McRae insisted that the City Reds would take the game ‘very seriously’ in a bid to get battle-hardened for the play-offs.

He selected his strongest possible side, recalling rested prop forwards Adam Sidlow and Paul Highton.

But his players let him down by continually dropping the ball, particularly when the rain hammered down in the second half.

They did it so often that you could have sworn that they were doing it on purpose to give the Crusaders a false sense of security with the Grand Final Eliminator in mind.

The Reds barely completed a set of six all game and the solid defence that has been the bedrock of their recent hot streak of form went AWOL at times in the first half. Conceding soft early tries enabled Celtic to open up a 16-4 lead with just half-an-hour on the clock.

And, despite Stefan Ratchford reducing their arrears following a stunning side-step, a sluggish Salford side never looked likely to avoid defeat, even when Celtic winger Luke Dyer was sat in the sin bin halfway through the second half.

Mat Gardner was Salford’s other try scorer, touching down on 18 minutes following good work by Richard Myler and John Wilshere while Stephen Bannister and Luke Adamson both lost control of the ball when tries looked a certainty.

But Salford, who won at Celtic 36-20 in the Northern Rail Cup semi-finals earlier in the season, will have to play a lot better than this if they want to return to Super League as National League One champions.

Celtic are also Super League bound, having joined Salford in gaining a three-year top flight licence.

The Crusaders produced an impressive all-round team performance on Saturday, shining in defence throughout and scoring tries via Dyer, Damien Quinn, David Tangata-Toa and Tony Duggan.

And the Welsh side look to be Salford’s biggest threat in the play-offs.

Team: Fitzpatrick; Gardner, Littler, Wilshere, White; Ratchford, Myler; Sidlow, Alker, Stapleton, Sibbit, Adamson, Turner. Subs used: Paul, Bannister, Leuluai, Highton. Tries: Gardner, Ratchford. Goal: Bannister. Attendance: 1,447.