Salford get that sinking feeling

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The Reds' fate was sealed when their only relegation rivals Hull KR gained a 42-6 win over Salford coach Shaun McRae's former club Hull at the KC Stadium to pull five points clear with two matches left to play.

Salford's drop into the Co-operative National League One comes just 12 months after they reached the Super League play-offs for the first time.

Under Karl Harrison, the Reds won 13 of their 28 matches to finish in fifth place in 2006 but so far this year have picked up just six wins and a draw from their 25 games.

Harrison paid the price for a disastrous first half to the season in which Salford won just three matches. His five-year tenure was ended in the wake of the club's 66-6 rout by Catalans Dragons in Perpignan on May 19.

Their survival hopes briefly flickered with victory over Huddersfield in one of two matches under caretaker-coach Steve Simms before Australian Shaun McRae took charge but his honeymoon period was all too brief.

In his first match, the Reds enjoyed a tense win over Harlequins in the first-ever try-less game in Super League and pulled off a shock victory over Bradford in July but they have lost all five matches since then.

They faced an uphill task after slumping to a 30-24 home defeat by Hull KR in a relegation "four-pointer" a month ago and crashed to a 40-16 defeat at Wigan on Friday.

Under McRae, Salford have won just two out of nine matches and, in hindsight, he may come to regret his decision to operate without an assistant following the departure of James Lowes to Warrington two months ago.

McRae, who was the only man to hold the post of head coach throughout the first nine years of Super League, will now experience life in the largely part-time National League for the first time.