Paul Rowley claims he “wasn’t angry” when he branded official “a disgrace”

Salford Red Devils are in a battle with the likes of Leeds Rhinos, Warrington Wolves, Hull FC, Hull KR and Huddersfield Giants for a place in the play-offs which has put added pressure on the Red Devils who have been on a seven game losing run.

This week they face former coach Ian Watson and his Huddersfield side in a key game in the play-off race.

After their last game, current boss Paul Rowley made headlines for the comments he made about Jack Smith.

However, he rejected the notion that he was angry after the game.

“I wasn’t angry, I was as calm as a cucumber,” he said on the club’s website.

“Are you expecting to hear anything from the RFL about that? You’ve said you’ve not really heard anything yet.”

“Yeah, I would imagine so. So I’ll just wait.”

He did confirm that Director of Rugby Ian Blease has received some contact.

“I think Ian Blease might have done, but I’ll just crack on.

“No, I’ve not. I’ve been told nothing.”

Rowley is in trouble for the following comments:

“It’s so hard. If we’d have won the game, I’d come in and say probably exactly the same thing. I thought the officials were a disgrace. I think Jack, I’ve watched him on telly, he’s been a disgrace a few times this year, one for us at Warrington at home. So three games in a row now we’ve been absolutely let down.

“So clearly Kendall and Liam Moore are the best two refs who get all the cup finals, we don’t get them too much so we must be deemed poor quality games.

“It’s kind of gloves off, I’m usually quite measured and take my time I don’t like to criticise because we’ve lost obviously, but again, I’d have said the same thing in victory.

“Games are very much decided by officials quite often and the obvious response to that will be, ‘they don’t miss a tackle’, ‘they don’t do a forward pass’, and no they don’t, but they don’t get batted 25 times a game either so a lot of it is just visual.

“Then when you’ve got a bright pink boot four foot in front of you on a touchline, then you would hope that somebody competent would make the right decision. As a result of that the sequence continues and we get a man in the bin and then there’s a try scored from a knock on.

“Usually in the last two games we’ve been on the wrong side of things and I never tread that path with the players. I always worry about what we can do and what we can do better but I’m finding it very, very hard to go in there and hit the players with a stick because I think they did everything we asked of them.”