Woolf Q&A: Wigan loss, Walmsley, Salford revisited and League Leaders

MC: Apart from the errors you highlighted, what else do look back at that went wrong in that performance against Wigan?

KW: The errors were the biggest issue in a game like that. It was a real back and forth game of footy where the first half in particular we didn’t make errors and all the footy was played in the middle of the field because both teams were defending well and not giving the each other the opportunity to attack.

The second half we just put ourselves under too much pressure by making too many errors – concentration errors. It is one thing when you are making errors when you are moving the ball, and attacking the opposition.

We didn’t earn the right to do that because we made a lot of tackle 1 and tackle 2 errors. We had a lot of those; contact errors, play the ball errors or clean drops – which were all to do with concentration. That was the disappointing thing. If you clean that up, you earn the right to play a bit more footy.

MC: In a game as tight as that when it was tough to make yards, how much of a miss was Alex Walmsley?

KW: We certainly missed Al and you miss your best players when they are not there. He is one of our best players there is no doubt about that. We just can’t put it back on him coming back and solve any problems that we have.

But he is going to help us, no doubt, in a real physical aggressive game like that you want your front rower out there who is going to give a bit back to the opposition.

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We are not putting it all on him missing the game, and not simply thinking it will all be resolved when he’s back.

We have to be better as a group.

MC: Two defeats and the season abruptly ending means the League Leaders is now out of your hands, where did that come in the grand scheme of things?

KW: The bigger picture is getting to and winning the Grand Final. We have said all along that we want to put ourselves in the best possible position and get the League Leaders as well.

That is the downside of the competition now being stopped because it is no longer in our hands. That is taken away now – but we can’t have it all our own way.

We applaud the RFL and Super League for their decision, but it puts us in a situation where we have got to sit back and cheer for someone else (Huddersfield) to win a game for us to finish top.

MC: With the benefit of hindsight – if you were to know the season had a chance of being curtailed, would that have altered your Salford selection?

KW: It is easy now in hindsight and when the competition is finished we can look back and think it was an opportunity to back some more players up.

That would have helped the inexperience and help us win that game. At the time there was no suggestion of the competition being stopped at all. We still had all teams saying that they could finish the season – and there had been no forfeits at that stage.

The reality is we had to make a decision based on having to play six games in a two-and-a-half-week period.

I based it on two things; 1. It is extremely unrealistic; anyone who thinks you can ask players to play three game in eight days and come out the other end and be in good physical and mental condition not understand the intensity of the footy these bloke are playing.

The second thing was that I backed our squad and players. And given that same situation I would do so again. I backed our young blokes to win a game against Salford – I thought they could; and we did everything but win that game and it was just a bit of inexperience that hurt them in the end.

And I backed our squad to come out and get a win against Wigan, but unfortunately, we came up there short as well.

If we went back two weeks and I was sitting in the same position and same scenario, I would make the same decision again.