London Broncos 66-6 Salford
When the competition loses three of its better sides in York, Bradford and Toulouse and then loses Featherstone and replaces all of those with a Salford side that are just lucky to be around, the standard inevitably drops. That’s without them factoring in Halifax going bust and Oldham significantly stripping back what they’re paying players. London are a Super League side in all but fixture list and it shows every week. The Broncos are another side who have had a long list of injuries and ordinarily, they’d be decimated but they have that much strength in depth, it doesn’t show. When you can stick 60 points on a side without Morea Morea, Gairo Voro, Jack Croft, Sid Adebiyi, Dean Hawkins, Emarly Bitungane, Robert Mathias, Alex Max and Finley Glare, it does make you wonder that if London can get a full team out in the drier months of June and July, that 106 points they scored the other week could well be beaten.
I do wonder about the Championship and do feel it’s heading towards a permanent feeder league. You’ve got York who own Newcastle now, there was rumour that Wigan had bought North Wales, but that has died down and you look across the league and it’s littered with young Super League players on one week loans, Salford had 3 from Wigan and 1 from Saints today, Halifax have players from Wigan, Saints and Wakefield and there’s young Lukas Mason, a Wigan player, who has played week to week at Rochdale, Oldham, Salford and London. Something more formal feels like it’s coming and if the £250m comes in, I wonder if some of that money will go on clubs buying feeder clubs and you’ll essentially see Hunslet become Leeds reserves, Swinton become Saints reserves and the like?
Anyway, Salford were decent for 40 minutes. They battled well and started really well, forcing a few London errors in the opening 10. London were too fit, strong and talented and ran away with it in the second half, scoring some nice tries.
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