Salford Red Devils were blown away by Catalans Dragons on Easter Monday, which marked a third successive Super League defeat for the hosts.
The home side came out of the blocks quickly and treated the bank holiday crowd at the AJ Bell Stadium to an early try, courtesy of centre, Deon Cross.
After the great start, Salford struggled to cope with the French side’s slick attacking play and as a result Catalans scored 30 unanswered points.
The Red Devils did manage to grab a consolation try through winger Ken Sio, but Catalans manged to wrap up the victory with their sixth try and Mitchell Pearce’s second of the match.
The result moves Salford up to ninth in the Super League table, despite defeat, due to results elsewhere, while Catalan are third.
The Red Devils got off to a flier when Cross dotted down after he got on the end of a Ryan Brierley kick, which evaded the Dragons defence.
The visitors then fired back immediately after the home side conceded a penalty following a dazzling run from the excellent Arthur Mourgue, with the subsequent period of play resulting in a Matthieu Laguerre try.
Catalans then raced into the lead with Tom Davies finding his way to the try line and then Mourgue produced a moment of magic, as he made a jinxing run through the Salford defence and produced a superb offload to Pearce, who scored his first try of the match.
The hosts failed to seize a chance to fightback, as Joe Chan was sin-binned for Catalans at the end of the first half, with the 12-men visitors instead extending their lead through Matt Whitley, who took advantage of some sloppy passing from the Red Devils.
Sam Kasiano then claimed a low Micky McLlorum kick to score the Dragons’ fifth try of the match.
The Red Devils did manage to grab a consolation try through the league’s top try scorer, Sio, who raced to the try line following a cross-field kick from Marc Sneyd.
The Salford joy didn’t last though, as the fluent French side wrapped up their victory with a sixth try, Pearce’s second of the match.
Speaking after the game, head coach Paul Rowley said: “It was two tired teams that got into an arm wrestle and one team was more resilient than the other.
“In the first half there were quite a lot of positives to be fair, Matty Costello played two games in three days and we obviously lost Tim Lafai, we got some opportunities early doors that I think Tim [Lafai] would have probably capitalised on.
“By the time we got up to the gantry for the second half we dropped a ball from kick-off, two restarts and a penalty, that probably told a story and we don’t deal with that adversity well at all.”
Here more from Rowley below:
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