Salford Red Devils 6 Hull FC 36: Zak Hardaker keeps Airlie Birds play-off hopes alive to relief of John Cartwright

The Red Devils only trailed 14-6 at half-time, and could consider themselves a little unfortunate to be behind, but Hull ran away with it in the second half to hand Salford an 11th straight loss.

“They were very spirited,” said Hull head coach Cartwright of Salford.

“With what they’ve been through and some previous results, you’d think they might sort of go away if you can make it hard for them but they stayed aggressive and had a plan for the 80 minutes and they wouldn’t go away.

“You can only try and keep your scoreline as clean as you can and we did that. It was a hard game to attack. It was really windy, the rain came, really slow ruck.

“I knew it was going to be a tough game and we came here to hopefully stay injury free and get the two points, and we did.

“I think it’s only three times we’ve started favourite this year and we’ve lost two of them. I thought there was some really strong defence in the second half and our attitude was great.”

Hull made their first attack count, Cade Cust bursting through in the eighth minute after Salford had given away a penalty for a high tackle.

Zak Hardaker landed the kick, and the visitors almost added a second try when Davy Litten went over in the corner but it took the video referee only one look to see he had dropped the ball.

Salford were rewarded for their efforts when Chris Hankinson found a gap on the sixth tackle to register their first try.

Hankinson brought the scores level with his boot but that lasted only seven minutes, and there was controversy about Hull’s next try as Jordan Rapana dropped a high ball in front of his own posts.

No knock on was given, and the visitors rubbed salt in the wound by working the ball to the prolific Lewis Martin in the corner.

Hardaker could not add the extras, but Hull were over again in the 33rd minute, this time Litten making no mistake with the grounding.

Salford’s challenge in the second half was apparent straight away as Litten did brilliantly to catch a kick that held up in the wind and set off a move that ended with Sam Eseh powering through.

Hardaker took Hull to the 20-point mark with his kick, and it was the 33-year-old who added the fifth try.

Number six arrived with 12 minutes to go as Nathan Connell dropped a pass under pressure from Hull and Tom Briscoe had the simple task of running away to the line.

Litten was denied another score after a missed kick from Sam Hill, with the Hull man just failing to touch the ball down in time, while Harvey Barron was millimetres in touch before grounding in the other corner.

There was no stopping Barron with three minutes to go, though, this time the winger acrobatically taking Aidan Sezer’s kick and touching down, with Jack Charles completing the scoring from the kick.