Salford centre Kallum Watkins makes first appearance in 10 months

Salford coach Paul Rowley was delighted to see international centre Kallum Watkins make his return to action for the first time in 10 months.

The England international made his first appearance since June 2021 in Salford’s 36-10 defeat to Catalans Dragons on Easter Monday.

Speaking after the game on Kallum Watkins, Rowley said: “Kallum looked like an international player.

“I am really pleased for him and I don’t mind celebrating that fact on what is otherwise a bad day.”

Paul Rowley: We beat ourselves

Rowley was disappointed with his side’s performance though, saying that the same old problems were costing them.

He said: “We beat ourselves. It was the same old story, unfortunately.

“I thought we saw 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 and there were some opportunities which I think (the injured) Tim Lafai would have capitalised on had he been playing.

“Our completions were high in the first half. It looked like we had learned some lessons and we had made some progression.

“But by the time I got up to the gantry for the second half, we’d dropped a ball from the kick-off, had two restarts and conceded a penalty.

“Things just snowballed from there – we didn’t deal with that adversity at all. The manner of some of the tries we conceded today and at Warrington on Thursday were unacceptable.

“We played dumb and killed ourselves. We have got a good group that work hard, but the thing we don’t do well is learn lessons.”

Salford centre Tim Lafai is expected to be out for four to five weeks with a broken hand. The Samoa international didn’t play against Catalans.

PLAY: Our free Fantasy Rugby League competition is back for 2022