24 February 2023 , 10:09
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Jordan Abdull kicked Salford to pieces - yet frustrated Hull KR boss Willie Peters wanted to “chop” his foot off.
The one-time England stand-off used his left boot to perfection last night to make it two wins from two for new Robins chief Peters. Abdull, 27, created three of KR’s four tries with his kicking quality as his impressive side hit back from a 4-0 interval lead. And it was his stellar pass that helped set up the other for Sam Wood as Rovers went top of Super League.
England captain Sam Tomkins labelled Abdull the best kicker in Super League after their opening day win against Wigan. Ex-Wigan scrum-half Peters admitted: “Firstly, he is a better kicker than me. But I wanted to chop his foot off in that first half. I didn’t think it was Jordan Abdull-like.
“I was really happy with his second half, though. He showed world-class game management. It took him a while to get into his groove but once he did, it was no surprise we played better rugby. But there were some terrific performances across the park for us and I was really proud of that display.
"It shows the fans and the club who we are. We had every excuse this week I suppose with a five-day turnaround and having four players out, to go 'close enough is good enough'. But that’s not who we want to be; we want to go out to compete and win every single week."
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Rangy Wood, in for injured England winger Ryan Hall, scored twice and Ethan Ryan also profited from Abdull’s quality. Rovers brilliantly turned things around in the second half against a Salford side who’d beaten Leigh last week and opened via Ken Sio’s try. But the visitors took the lead through Ryan in the 45th minute and never looked back as sloppy Red Devils hit the self-destruct button with mistakes galore making a huge 15 handling errors.
Hull KR's James Batchelor is tackled by Salford's Jack Ormondroyd (Paul Greenwood/REX/Shutterstock) (Paul Greenwood/REX/Shutterstock)Full-back Will Dagger, in for the injured Lachlan Coote, slotted the first of his four goals. Abdull slid in a grubber for Frankie Halton to score next but Deon Cross immediately hit back after James Batchelor coughed up the restart. Marc Sneyd improved - only for his side to mess up their restart through Sam Stone. This time Abdull showed his handling class with a quality pass to Shaun Kenny-Dowall who squeezed Wood over. And Wood got his second in the 74th minute after Ryan Brierley dropped Abdull’s latest towering kick.
Salford boss Paul Rowley said: “It’s a bit of a flattener. Our execution was off and some of that resulted in errors. Some of those were silly, little ones and immature but credit to KR, they scrambled really well.”