St Helens coach Royce Simmons claimed his players suffered from stage fright as they stuttered to a 38-10 victory over Salford in the first Stobart Super League match at their new £30million Langtree Park stadium.

A week after having their own stadium opening night ruined by Castleford, the Reds threatened to spoil Saints' party when they led 10-0 after 24 minutes.

But Saints came to life in the second half, with substitute second rower Andrew Dixon scoring two of their five tries and, although well below their best, they currently sit at the top of the Stobart Super League with two wins from their first two matches.

"I think having all the great players here and the build-up over the last month or more, it got to us," said Simmons. "Our ball completion was very poor in the first half, which came back to a lot of blokes playing as individuals.

"Salford's ball completion was up in the eighties and we were down to 50 at one part of the first half.

"We needed half-time. We spoke about settling down and in the second half it was definitely a big improvement."

Simmons singled out for special praise acting captain James Roby, who followed up his man-of-the-match performance against London Broncos with another impressive show.

"Roby's been fantastic," he said. "It seems like he starts up where he finishes. Nothing is a problem to him, he just keeps going.

"He doesn't get a lot of recognition for his defence but he cleans up in the middle of the ruck."

Salford went into the game without one forward, Vinnie Anderson through illness, and three others - Iafeta Paleaaesina, Wayne Godwin and Jordan James - because of injury and suffered major disruption during the game.

Hooker Stuart Howarth broke his nose and has a suspected broken thumb, debutant forward Shannon McPherson had to have stitches inserted in his face and centre Joel Moon was taken to hospital a suspected broken wrist.

"We had to deal with a lot of adversity," said Reds coach Phil Veivers. "We had eight players that couldn't train until yesterday.

"We put a lot of effort in but effort alone doesn't win you ball games. We came here to be competitive and we thought we could win.

"We spoke in the week about it being a circus and we were hoping to spoil the party. At half-time we were right in the frame to do that.

"We were pretty happy at half-time, although I was disappointed with the try that was given by the video referee and one that we didn't get.

"They upped the tempo in the second half and we stopped doing what was working for us in the first half. We went 10 or 11 sets when we saw the ball once.

"I'm very disappointed with how the score blew out at the end. They played some good footie and we missed tackles."