In the interests of saving The Speculator from a potential libel action, other tooth-filling loosening, tongue tying confectionery is available.

Really encouraged by the second half performance as many have said that game last year would have gone away from us. Whilst his defence might be questioned (by others on here) I'm starting to believe that the Drinkwater/Williams HB partnership might turn out to be as effective as we'd hoped.

I had Ashton as MOM he had a great game.

On a slightly negative note, I wonder what happened to the 'missing' 1500?

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Yes, Matty Ashton has really caught the eye in all three games so far. He's getting through loads of work and has been very solid. I've no qualms about Williams getting MOM last night (despite his couple of poor passes out to the left), but Ashton and Mikaele (Amor, please note, it's Mikaele, NOT Mikalaele!!) were certainly close behind.

Surely 'pykey' is offensive and warrants an 8 game commentary box ban?

I think Amor is a really poor pundit/co-commentator

Agreed, i didnt like the commentary setup at all last night. Amor comes across as really bitter about the time spent with us. Seems very negative about warrington.

I thought we were great in the second half, we stopped being slack in defence and made the attacking moves stick better. I do think there were some harsh calls on Salford but they didn't help themselves at all with the accumulation of penalties. They just flat refused to adapt to the way the game was being officiated and then got frustrated about it. Brierley was unlucky to be the one to go for a rest but i certainly felt a yellow was coming for one of their players for the number of penalties they were conceding. I felt the first 8 point try was a correct call, no reason at all for dupree to slide in. The second I didn't agree with, i dont think there was anything in that from Watkins.

I'd given the game up at half time, I just hoped we would sort out the defense and win the second half. Last year we would have completely collapsed, so the comeback was a massive positive. It looked like, for once, the wake up call actually woke us up.

I’m glad someone has his finger on the pulse FMC. I think if it was clear there was a team warning it might some of the bleating from opposition fans though.

I agree with all those who thought Matty Ashton was MoM, he has come on leaps and bounds since his physique is more sportsman than “Kes”

To be fair he hadn't missed any in the previous 2 games.

Good to see Ashton turning into a "thinking" player instead of just being someone stuck on the wing. Some good contributions from him last night & Thewliss catch for the cross field kick was spot on.
As for the forward passes ,i thought we were playing Saints or Leeds.

i was quite surprised how mikaele finished the game last night tbh, he didn't look anywhere near as knackered as he normally does.

kinda weird rotations last night, Vaughan and mikaele did two stints each, but kasiano bullock and harrison only did one by my reckoning, whitehead didn't get on, did we use all of our interchanges?

No Whitehead didn’t come on. We’ve five first teamers out at the minute and we’re playing pretty patched up. So to be 3 from 3 in these circumstances augurs very well indeed.

Indeed. I am sure I saw Clark packing down in the front row of the scrum at some point last night.

yeah he was "playing" at 13, but people pack down in any order now, some props dont even pack down, see tyler dupree for Williams try

Harrisons's knee playing up & Kasiano not well. So Mikaele played more than normal & performed well. I can understand why Whitehead didn't get on ... when you are running out of time to win a game you don't experiment. Having our two hookers on the pitch has served us well so far.

I like it when they are both on the pitch - Clark is such a dangerous runner around the ruck and can do big minutes. Walker is also becoming more influential. It gives one of the bigger guys (last night it was Harrison) a chance to take a break if not 100%. I'd actually like to see Harrison get a couple of weeks off to get his knee sorted but looks like that is still a couple of weeks away.

As a neutral I really enjoyed that game.
Certainly a game of 2 halves as was the case with Salford last time out.
Thought both 8 pointers were harsh on Salford and if that is now the new norm then fine but I doubt it.
Also thought you got the rub of the green where the decisions were going last night
Agree there was no need to keep harping on how you would have lost that game last season it`s getting boring now.
Williams played well as did Ashton and Clark in the second half.
I think with Drinkwater he is the perfect foil for Williams and will give him more time to do what he does best.

Scouring the middle east for tubes of banana flavoured Toffos, perhaps.

Reminds me of Higham and Monaghan. Rowley's teams have always played good rugby. Unfortunately they have also tended to be ill-disciplined.

Tim Lafai was superb in the first half. What a player. He would be a handy addition to any side.

Just to clarify... The ref doesn’t give an ‘8 point try’ he only awards a 2 point penalty kick.

That is a good point. The 8 point idea muddies the water. It is quite simply a penalty kick for the offence. There can be little argument that both incidents would have resulted in a penalty kick anywhere else in the field. The punishment for going in with knees or clonking someone in the head as they score is a penalty under the posts ... it seems reasonable to me. The fact that it happened twice just shows how rattled Salford were.

all props are playing well arent they.

Mikaele had his best game, looked a handful and didnt fade. Ran hard and caused them all sorts of problems.

Bullock - outstanding again for me.

Paul Vaughan is a machine.

its gone from our weakest position, to probably our strongest.

Yes, they need to come up with a better name for such incidents. I have heard some people calling last night's two incidents penalty tries, which they were obviously not. The referee asked the video ref to "check for the merits of an eight-point try", but when one of the kicks is missed, it ends up not being an eight-point try, so that's an inaccurate name too! On a matter of protocol, it was interesting that when they were looking at the Thewlis one, the video ref checked if Thewlis was onside. Had there been no knees in the tackle, I assume the ref would have simply awarded the try, so was the video ref within his rights to check the onside? Thankfully it didn't matter on this occasion.

while im not arguing against that... twice the ref said

'Its an 8 point try'

So he kind of does.