Salford RLFC Ladies 10 Warrington 60 Match report

 

SALFORD FALL BACK INTO OLD HABITS

Salford RLFC 10 Warrington Wolves 60 Match Report David Clegg

A vastly improved second half performance by the Salford Ladies’ team, stopped the winning margin of this, overall, one-sided contest, from being significantly greater for, with the Wolves racking up 32 points in a mere 27 minutes, all the signs were for something worse.

In fairness, it has to be said that the visitors side comprised of up to seven current Wigan players on dual registration, alongside at least four former Salford players ,namely, winger, Caylee Miller, forward, Megan Condliffe, scrum half, Ellie Costello ,and stand-off, Michelle Davies. With Miller running in five tries, and Davies slotting over eight goals from eleven attempts, that contingent of former Salford favourites had a significant say in the final difference in scores.

After a magnificent win, the previous week, over the Bradford Bulls, it had been hoped that the Salford side had turned a corner in their fortunes, but the sheer size, power, and might of the visitors’ forwards was quite daunting and difficult to handle, unless there was a larger than normal number of players in each tackle, which then consequently led to considerable space out wide for their speedy backs to exploit, in the event of an offload.

There are, nevertheless, steps that a team can take to counter some of these problems and Salford’s half time was clearly used to good effect upon there Sumption, with the Wolves suddenly being limited to a single converted try over the initial 25 mins.

Where there had been previously been too many loose carries, often gifting both position and possession to Warrington, ball retention, by means of set completion, as they had learned in the Bradford game, can be most beneficial. Indeed, it can often lead to back-to-back sets, through penalties, set restarts, and the forcing of goal-line drop-outs.

Every completed set takes, on average, a full minute, so ten such repeated sets relieves you of having to do any tackling for around ten minutes, hence, along with other similar improvements, the whole team showed a much greater command of their own performance, until, sadly, fatigue from all their previous exhausting defensive efforts caught up on them, in the final fifteen minutes of the game.

The two big highlights of the afternoon came for them through tries, one in each half.The first came in the 16th minute, when the ball was passed along the line from right to left, until it came to centre, Mia Regan, who ran a great line to completely out pace the sliding Warrington defence to score an unconverted try, out wide.

Regan has been most impressive throughout the season so far, having had an excellent game in the opening fixture at Widnes, followed up by some sterling off-the-ball efforts in the following encounters. It was, therefore, most pleasing to see her get some reward for all her endeavours so far this season.

Their second score came part way through that first twenty-five minutes of the second half, by fullback, Anna Dennis. Dennis had had to content herself, in the face of the onslaught they had all, hitherto, had to face, with tormenting the Wolves with her variety of kick-offs, after their scores. These included placing the landing of the ball close to the touchline and the bounce putting it into touch, high kicks, long kicks, and one which she punted a mere ten metres forward to which she won the race to recover possession, as did so many of her others.

On this occasion, she showed the same variety with her end-of-set kick. Instead of the usual high bomb, she put in a short chip-and-chase which stood up beautifully for her to take, and she then evaded a couple of attempted tackles to ground between the posts and duly add the conversion

It has to be remembered that this is a new team, with still limited experience of playing together, and that, in itself, leads to lack of consistency in performance, both from one match to another, and even from one half of a game to the following one. Time is the significant factor in eradicating such inconsistency, and the important thing is to learn from each match.

SALFORD

Anna Dennis, Chloe Lyons, Lucy Grantham, Mia Regan, Katie Roach, Lily Oakley,

Isabella Woods, Dearbhla McCoy, Gracie Barrett, Lydia Elstone, Katrina Blencowe,

Ataria Tabi, Alex Simpson

Interchanges:

Theresa Crookall, Jodie Morris, Emily Carlisle`

Match report by David Clegg

Pictures by Tara Moore @jdmatchdayphotography