You must have been pleased Scott Grix escaped a ban for striking Hull’s Gareth Ellis last Thursday night?
Yes we were, but we did put up a strong case in mitigation.
What he did wasn’t great, but there were reasons why he reacted the way he did, and the disciplinary panel accepted that fact.
What initially sparked the incident was that Grixy was pushed in the back by Gareth Ellis, when he shouldn’t have been.
He was coming from an advancing position towards the ball and is allowed to stand where he did , and an opponent isn’t allowed to come into the back of him and push him to try and effect a tackle on a teammate, which he did.
If Grixy had been retreating to get where he did – basically standing in the line and in front of blokes – then opponents are allowed to go through him. That wasn’t the case here.
As a full-back, Grixy knew what he was doing, so he knew what his opponent did to him wasn’t legal.
But he still shouldn’t have taken the law into his own hands.
Does the fact Grixy is free to play mean Brett Ferres (suspension) and David Faiumu (compassionate leave) are the only two members of the senior squad unavailable over Easter?
Unfortunately not.
We’ve also lost our young hooker, Kruise Leeming, for the next six weeks with a high ankle sprain.
That’s clearly disappointing for Kruise and disappointing for us, because we’ve obviously not got the biggest squad in the world.
But we’re certainly not going to make an issue of it.
I’m not one for licking our wounds. I’m one for making sure we roll up our sleeves and just get on with it.
Excuses isn’t the business we’re in, and we also won’t be making an issue of the fact we’re about to come into the busy Easter period.
We’ve known all year we’re about to face two games in four days, just like everyone else in the competition, so now certainly isn’t the time to have a moan and groan.
Again, this is the time for everyone to keep their heads down and work hard.
And how’s the mood in the camp during what’s such a tough period. Are the players downbeat?
Not at all.
It goes without saying that this is a tough time for us, but the attitude of the players has been very good.
On Monday, we did some back-to-basics stuff, reaffirming some of the fundamentals of the game, and did some of that again yesterday.
We then went on to do some good, constructive team stuff, which went really well.
None of us is dwelling on the past, what we’re doing is working on getting some good days together to make sure we give ourselves the best possible chance when it comes to gameday.
Even though the results haven’t been going well, we’ve lost none of our self belief. We still know what a good team we can be on our day.
It's obviously Salford tomorrow, but have you also been able to spend any time looking at Wakefield, who you host on Monday?
Almost all of the focus is on Salford.
They clearly carry a big threat, and have a lot of quality to draw upon all across the field.
But we still can’t ignore the fact we face Wakefield on Monday, so we have had a little look at them.
Having said that, the Monday game is always a very tough one in terms of preparation.
(Wakefield coach) Richard Agar will be in the same boat as us in that on Friday night and Saturday morning the club will resemble a MASH unit.
It’ll be a case of bandaging people up and throwing them almost straight back out onto the field.
But we do already know we’ll have some players who will be there at
Salford but won’t be playing against Wakefield.
We also won’t have any players playing on dual registration for Batley at Dewsbury tomorrow night, because we need to have as many players at our disposal to make sure we’re well covered over the next few days.
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