Have we all recovered from the Easter weekend’s exploits? I think I’ve just about sorted myself out.What about the rugby eh? What can I say about Thursday night? Well I’ll start with the conditions, dreadful springs to mind (I’m keeping it clean), I don’t recall the last time I’ve been anywhere (not only rugby related) when I’ve seen so much rain, at one point I was sure I spotted Noah travelling in his much reputed ark past Asda down the Atherleigh Way. Then throw the gale force winds and we had a recipe for disaster. In fairness to both sides, the performances in those conditions we’re pretty good. Yes you’d get handling errors, when don’t you? And sure it wouldn’t make for an open expansive game, as I’m sure our lads would prefer, but overall the quality was decent enough. The lads really soaked up the Leigh attack in the first half when we had the worst of the nights weather in our faces (The players that is) and going in 2 – 2 at half time, I’m sure Shaun and the boys were more than happy with that. In the 2^nd half it was our turn to use the conditions and we did it excellently, Myler and Ratchford’s kicking kept Leigh pretty much on the back foot and gave our forwards such as Stapleton, Nash, Leuluai etc a great platform to take the game.

Yet again on Sunday reds fans walked away from the match feeling a little let down. After our initial performance against Rochdale we’ve failed to hit that level again. Against a decent Oldham team we struggled in attack, most of our tries/decent attacking chances came of the back of penalties. Again on Sunday in the derby, at times, looked lost in attack, so much so that I heard people saying the team looked like they hadn’t met each other before never mind trained or played. I know it’s early in what will be a long season, and yes we’ve not conceded more that 2 tries in any game yet, whilst scoring 26 tries in total of our own and having a positive points difference of 110 already. We just appear to be taking things a little easy and maybe underestimating our opposition. I know it’s not fair on the boys to expect 80 minutes without mistakes or little things going wrong but we’ve got plenty to work on before we meet Leigh in March. I’m sure Shaun and the coaching staff will have the matter in hand and the boys will be paying for their mistakes in training this week.

This Friday sees us travel to Oldham, who just a fortnight ago gave us a good test at the Willows. Although the score didn’t reflect that fact, Oldham did show enough to think that Friday will be our biggest test yet. With plenty of Super League experience in their ranks (and a few ex-Reds) they’ll see this as a chance to catch us below par. The loss of Jiminez (Strange as it was) sets us another issue in the centres but Jordan Turner proved that he could fill that gap with ease with his hat-trick on Sunday.

Sorry if I sound negative, I don’t mean to be, I’d just like to see us show our class for longer periods in the game. As for Sunday, wasn’t it great to have the derby back (If only for a couple of matches) another great turn out by reds fans contributing to a crowd of 1,661, which we’re led to believe is Swinton’s biggest ever crowd at Park Lane. Following on from the amazing 4,224 at the Oldham game things are looking up. And of course I can’t end without mentioning the Stadium, what a timely boost for us the fans, the players, the staff and board and of course John Wilkinson OBE.

I’ll admit I was waning at one point as to it happening but I am more than happy to slap myself around the head for doubting it for even one second.

Right I’m off to find a spade to help with the digging, see you all Friday.

This weekend see the next chapter of the Salford City Derby (Although I’m sure Lions fans won’t like that wording!), there have been some great battles between the two over the past 128 years. Let’s hope this weekend will prove to be another. Both teams will be nothing but encouraged by their starts to the Northern Rail Cup campaign but with varying amounts of success. Whilst we’ve come up with two big wins against dogged opposition, the Lions have lost narrowly to the same clubs, firstly a late try by James Coyle coverted by Mick Nanyn for Oldham at Boundary Park gave the Roughyeads a 22 – 20 win. And last weekend they again lost to a late try by Martin Ainscough and converted by Simon Svabic for Rochdale at Park Lane only for Swinton to score in the last play of the game but unfortunately Richie Hawkyard missed the resulting conversion for a 34 – 36 loss. Even with two losses behind them, they still have the 2^nd best attack and 2^nd best defence (But of course, they haven’t met us yet!) I’m sure Swinton will be up for this test and with the amount of ex-Reds in their ranks, they’ll be a few players with a point to prove.

On a personal note I love derby days, they may have lost a bit of that competitive edge over the past 10 years or so, primarily since the loss of Station Road. Either way they’re still special. I’m sure the Swinton fans will have plenty to say but I’d be 99% sure that we will too.

Players who may feature who have played for both clubs: Karl Fitzpatrick, Darren Bamford (Swinton), Chris Morley (Swinton), Darren Gibson (Swinton), Dean Gorton (Swinton), Martin Moana (Swinton), Barry Hamilton (Swinton), Gareth Hayes (Swinton)

A reminder of a few special Games:1880 - Salford 0 Swinton 2 – The first Derby (Played under RU rules) 1885 - Swinton 0 Salford 0 – A true derby, so much so Swinton suspended fixtures between the two teams for two years and that had to be played at a neutral venue!1899/00 Challenge Cup Final; Swinton 16 Salford 8 - 17,864 @ Fallowfield1901/02 First game at the Willows; Salford 2 Swinton 0 – 16,9811931/32 Lancashire Cup Final; Salford 10 Swinton 8

1990/91 - Division One Final game; Swinton 10 Salford 10 (Swinton clinched promotion and we won the league title)

1991/92 - Final game at Station Road; Swinton 18 Salford 26 – 3,487 – Ady, Ady Hadley!

Don’t forget to listen to Salford City Radio 94.4 FM between 18.00 – 19.00 this (and every) Wednesday for the Rugby League Round-up.

OK I’ll admit, no matter how good I thought our squad looked, I feared the worst against Warrington at the weekend. Having seen the Wire squad during the week and the team they proposed to start with. The squad including internationals like, Adrian Morley, Vinne & Louis Anderson, Paul Rauhihi, Martin Gleeson, Jon Clarke and of course the aussie sensation Matt King, throw in Michael Monaghan, Kevin Penny & Paul Johnson, I think you can see my point.

After all my initial fears we was treated to feast of quality rugby. The team had been rocked by two pieces of news that really won’t want, (I don’t think I need to go in to detail here), we had a bit of juggling to do regarding starting positions. The loss of Robbie Paul was always going to be a huge gap to fill but the lads who stepped up to the plate more than covered for the loss.

Youngsters Richard Myler and Stephan Ratchford didn’t look out of place against their illustrious opponents. Impressive debuts from Adam Sidlow, James Jiminez, Chris Borgese, Paul White, Craig Stapleton and Stephen Banister have given us even more reason to believe we can succeed in everything we hope to this season. I think everyone was taken aback by the size of Lee Jewitt, Luke Adamson and Steve Nash compared to last season.

  Myler, impessive debut

Big Phil Leuluai continued his impressive start for the club with another barnstorming appearance. And although it was only a friendly I’m sure even the Warrington fans were impressed by our performance. We competed in all departments, our defence looked solid even with all the interchanges and players swapping positions, our attack was fluent and in patches we showed Harlem Globetrotters style handling, which has been missing I recent years.

And just a quick comment on the attendance, I think 2008 was a decent turn out considering the game was only confirmed at lunch time on Friday along with the change of venue, is this a sign of things to come?

Now I’m sure we’re all looking forward to our first ‘Proper’ test against Rochdale at Spotland on Sunday.

See you there!

Since 14^th September 2007 and the home defeat by Warrington and subsequently our final Super League game before relegation, I’ve been looking forward to 2008, and although it may mean a season in British RL’s 2^nd tier, I think we’ve reasons to be optimistic.

Having been thorough what happened last season I think we deserve a season of success. And haven’t the club gone the right way of insuring that this happens, what with the players we’ve managed to retain Alker, Fitzpatrick, Wilshere etc and the new guys Robbie Paul, Craig Stapleton, Paul White etc. We may, potentially, have a better-equipped squad than last year.

And what awaits us? Who will be our main challengers? Many have tipped Celtic Crusaders to go well, Leigh are always there or there about, we now have the resurgent Halifax who come off the back of their best season in some time. Whitehaven will be tough especially at the Rec; Widnes could well still put a decent team together following their recent trails and tribulations. Other than them I don’t envisage Dewsbury, Batley, Featherstone (Although our record there is poor) or Sheffield causing us too many problems (Famous last words).

Of course it all kicks off with the Northern Rail Cup and I don’t think we could have asked for a much better group. Oldham, Rochdale & Swinton, all 2^nd division and all virtually on our doorstep. Oldham appear to have signed quite well but I feel they’ll be some distance away from where we will be.

I’m really looking forward to visiting some of these grounds again and then again I’m dreading others.

So that’s both trophies wrapped up now just for the Challenge Cup, no pressure lads! Add to that the news about the imminent stadium building, things look bright, things look RED (s)