SALFORD RED DEVILS did themselves proud in Perpignan according to coach Paul Rowley, who was full of praise for his players’ battling spirit in a narrow Challenge Cup quarter-final defeat.
The financially-challenged club were behind by just two points at half-time and fought to the end of a 20-12 loss to Catalans Dragons, leaving Rowley in admiration of his team.
“To come here, after all we’ve gone through and are still going through, to perform like that speaks volumes for the playing group,” said Rowley.
“We were still in it right until the final hooter against a top, top team.
“We lost our fullback Ryan Brierley just before kick-off which, added to all of our other selection difficulties for other reasons, made things even more challenging.
“But every time you ask these players to perform they deliver and I’m proud of them.
“Catalans have been a consistently top team for many, many years now and Steve McNamara has done a fantastic job since he took the reins here.
“As ever, they are very big, physical team who have lots of offloads, they dominate territory and possession in most of the games that I have seen them play and today was no different.
“They’ve got a vociferous and passionate support group so it was always going to be an almighty challenge but we were up to it.
“Of course we’re disappointed we are out of the cup but there are so many positives to take from this performance.”
