Wire fan Rob Watson looks back over Saturday's loss to Salford Red Devils - in the spirit of 1955!

BIZARRELY for round three, this game had something of a ‘must win’ feel to it.

We were hoping The Wire would produce something close to their best as they did against Brisbane and produce a big win to kick start their Super League season. Unfortunately that never looked like happening.

Right from the beginning, Salford looked to be playing a bit quicker than Wire and disappointingly their enthusiasm levels looked higher.

Salford gave Wire’s right side defence a quick working over early on and it only took three consecutive plays down that side for Salford to produce the first try of the game.

Wolves enjoyed their best spell of the game for around fifteen minutes in the middle of the first half, gradually getting on top territorially. Despite a poor performance overall, Wire did create a lot of scoring chances, but missed several of them.

I literally lost count of how many times they got over the line but couldn’t ground the ball, my guess would be six.

These moments were scattered through the game but began in this period. Eventually though, Dec Patton did manage to get a try during this spell when Wire were on top, but no more tries came in that period.

Salford edged in front when Wire failed to deal with a high kick in their in-goal area, but despite being miles away from their best Wire finished the first half in front after Jack Hughes forced his way over.

At the start of the second half, we were still hoping for a sustained burst of brilliance to be enough to create a comfortable margin.

Instead, Salford scored first to regain the lead and it was clear that this game was going to be won by a close margin whoever the victor would be.

Wire did manage to level the scores when their best handling movement of the game resulted in Jack Johnson squeezing over from his right-wing position.

Salford nosed in front again with a late penalty and the feeling grew that a bad performance was going to result in a bad defeat.

A converted try by Salford stretched the lead to eight, and although we couldn’t see a game clock from where we were, it felt like it didn’t really matter how long was left as this was a game that Wire were not going to win.

It was difficult to tell just how heavy the pitch was, but whatever the reason this was one of the slowest Wire performances I have seen for years, and without quick play the balls they always look a little lost for ways of gaining yards and scoring points.

They appeared lacking in enthusiasm, which I am always reluctant to say, because that is the biggest criticism of all.

Whatever the reason, the energy required to perform at the required standard to win Super League games just didn’t seem to be there.

Whether it was a case of still not coming down from the Brisbane game or waiting for Wigan on Thursday, we’ll never know, but one way or another they need to find that energy soon before a bad start becomes a bad season.