Salford Red Devils: Paul Rowley says he's proud but disappointed following the defeat to Wigan Warriors

Jai Field scored a late try to give Matty Peet’s side a 30-24 victory at the DW Stadium.

Rowley says they can take some positives from the defeat, even if it is hard to take.

He said: “I think I’ve heard it mentioned a few times now since the final whistle, proud but disappointed is probably a fair assessment of it.

“To summarise the game, there were some big moments. There was a long moment in the first half where we didn’t have the ball for a long period of time, which took a lot of energy out of the tank, and paid dividends to Wigan right at the end.

“There was the moment when we should’ve had the set restart when the ball hit (Liam) Farrell’s leg. I thought that was a really big moment. We were really good with the ball in hand and looked dangerous. We looked like we were troubling them every time we had it.

“It would’ve been interesting to see what we could’ve done with another set of six on there Wigan, and that would’ve changed the context of the game.

“We came out of the system a couple of times to concede tries in the first half, which is disappointing, but overall to throw any criticism at the group would be totally incorrect.

“I thought they had effort and commitment, and ability and skill. It’s not just about trying, it’s about having good players, and they’ve shown that. There’s a lot of positives to take from it.

“There are things we would do differently and more individual learning points, but it’s still equally painful as we wanted to win and anything other than that is sickening.

“Jai Field is a great player and Wigan are a great team. Given some of our salary cap on the field then we deal with that try. So you kick yourself in that respect because it’s a ‘what if.’

“That’s where we are as a club, we don’t have the depth and that luxury of freshening up our players. We will take confidence out of it, but we are never short of that anyway.”