Not sure you can do that, what if approval was not granted and Salford won with a full strength team. Would they then have to forfeit the points.

There's only one team bottom of SL at the moment

There always is

It's a right mess whichever way you look at it. It will probably affect the crowd at Saints and, I would imagine that, the BBC are not too thrilled as it will affect their viewing figures. If Saints are not at the top of the league by Saturday evening they are in for a difficult season.

At least once again we were history makers in defeat

I believe Saints are livid. Any potential "walk ups" now won't happen. Salford have clearly looked at it and presumed that they had a good chance of losing with a weakened team anyway, so made the decision to completely rest everyone and go again in R2. That's how I see it anyway.

Either that or as Jon Wilkin put it last night, it's a petty strategy to get back at the RFL.

Either way I think they should be looking at disciplinary action against Salford. There was a lot of goodwill shown towards them from across the game during this period of turmoil and it feels a bit like they've thrown it back in everyone's faces. This isn't a team resting players ahead of a Cup Final or Play off game.

They were put under those special measures to help them and the other clubs voted to allow them an advance of the central distribution money and they then go and make a mockery of the first game of the season and to make matters worse, it's on the BBC. It feels like they've got this one all wrong IMO.

Agreed. They've also treated their travelling support with contempt too.

I've not heard of a lot of their squad but some Saints fans have said 4 or 5 are under 18 and have barely played. There's a player welfare issue right there.

I'll admit its also taken the gloss off it for me and my eldest lad tomorrow. I've gone from looking forward to it to now knowing we are going to win and it's just by what score. We are in a complete lose/lose situation as if we don't win by a cricket score we'll be criticised and if we do win well, it will be "well what did you expect, its only Salford Reserves"

Tomorrow for me is purely 2 points, a chance to build some combinations, but we also should really be looking at trying to put a good score on. We finished 3rd in 2023 on points difference and it's a chance tomorrow to build that.

Bit left field here but I can’t see why the BBC don’t pull it from the schedule and put a film in its place. But then again it will likely look the mockery it’s going to be so the RA RA brigade will love this and give them cause to ridicule our game.