Chester: Salford dominated from the start

Wakefield head coach Chris Chester admitted his side were outplayed by Salford in the Challenge Cup on Thursday.

Trinity crashed 30-6 to exit the competition at the quarter-final stage and Chester conceded the Red Devils thoroughly deserved their victory.

“It was a tough one but take nothing away from Salford,” he said. “I thought they could have scored more points than they did, and from minute one to minute 80 they totally dominated. We got beaten in every facet of the game.

“The injuries certainly don’t help. We’re down to 15 or 16 fit players. Ashley Gibson and Adam Walker probably shouldn’t have played, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse. We were pretty poor.

“We wanted to progress, we’re disappointed we’re knocked out but more disappointed we put in a performance like we did.

“We looked off the ball, clueless and we got outmuscled by a really good Salford side. We’ve done very little training with the Leeds game and the mini Easter period that’s had a massive toll on players – we’re down on troops but there should be no excuse for the performance we put in.

“We lacked any real conviction with the ball and had no aggression when defending. The first twenty minutes hurt us, the errors, the poor contacts weren’t acceptable. Salford played very well tonight and deserve to be in the semi-final.”