Castleford Tigers legend Michael Shenton has been working for Hull FC since his retirement but today he was working for OurLeague as the Black and Whites hosted Salford Red Devils in a game that seemed on paper like it could go either way.
However, the Red Devils ploughed through them to win 60-14 on a day where Hull FC handed the win to Salford on a plate in the eyes of Shenton.
“They gifted it to them on a plate,” Shenton said on OurLeague.
“Tony will have had a game plan but you have to be really mentally tough to beat Salford, and the teams that have beaten them have done that.
“You have to throw a punch back and hit them on the nose and Hull just couldn’t do that.”
He highlighted what exactly went wrong for them:
“The six agains really hurt them and when you are giving people like Andy Ackers a platform, the rest of the spine are going to have a field day especially with the strike players out wide.
“With a ruck speed like that, Salford are too good. They have shown glimpses in the first few weeks, they won’t have panicked because they’re not far away.
“Today it clicked and it really clicked today. Some of those tries were exceptional, you won’t see better tries than that all year probably.”
He then had an ominous warning for the Black and Whites who host Champions St Helens next week who could be like a wounded animal:
“Unfortunately for Hull FC they came up against a really hot Salford side, they will need to perform much better than that next week against a Saints team in the same boat and it is rare to see Saints go back to back with losses.”