squad to face Huddersfield Giants on Sunday afternoon<\/a>. Macdonald hasn\u2019t featured for Salford since May 25 after taking unpaid leave to return to Australia and spend some time with his family.<\/p>\nThe centre was one of those left out by Salford in the opening stages of the season as they struggled with the RFL imposed salary cap restrictions and he was forced to go on loan to Oldham in April just to get minutes under his belt.<\/p>\n
It means that he has made just six appearances all year for Salford and while he has scored five tries, including two in the Challenge Cup win over Midlands Hurricanes, it has been a difficult season for the Papua New Guinea international.<\/p>\n
He hasn\u2019t been seen since returning down under, but with two games to go before the end of the Super League season, he has returned to Greater Manchester and he looks set to take on Huddersfield Giants this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe texts me every week and tells me he\u2019s on his way but I think one week he went to see his mum en route and then he went somewhere else,\u201d Rowley said while working as a pundit on Sky Sports on Friday night. \u201cEvery week I just say, \u2018OK, see you Thursday, Nene\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week the picture came in and he was at departures. \u2018Oh alright Nene, I\u2019ll see you Saturday morning, then\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Rowley on the future of Salford Red Devils<\/p>\n
Macdonald\u2019s return is a boost but where his long-term future lies is completely unknown. In fact, the same can be said for everyone associated with the Red Devils, given the precarious position the club finds itself in.<\/p>\n
The club have a third meeting with HMRC next month, having seen the last two hearings adjourned already in the expectation that a bridging loan arrives and if they can\u2019t find the necessary finances to pay off their debts, the club could be wound up.<\/p>\n
Asked about the future of Salford, Rowley said: \u201cI think the main thing is Salford, like any club is bigger than any coach, any player or anything like that. Salford will bat on, I\u2019m very, very confident that it will bat on. In what guise, I can\u2019t answer that, I don\u2019t know what that will look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cSalford is a city full of passionate people and wealthy people as well. I\u2019m pretty confident there\u2019ll be a Salford next year. I don\u2019t know what division Salford will be in and I\u2019m not sure who\u2019ll be owning or leading Salford.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The owners] are clearly working extremely hard to get whatever the deal is over the line. That\u2019s what I can say, I can confidently say they are working extremely hard to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not spoken to the guys for quite a while. I guess Paul would be speaking to them more regularly than me. In that respect, I think we take them at world value. I like to go into meeting people with an innocent mind and hoping and expecting people to have the right intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n
On his own future, Rowley added: \u201cAgain, who knows. If the club goes in admin, there\u2019s so many variables. I\u2019m getting them through every game this year and I committed to that and I committed to doing every interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I get through to that last game, I\u2019m turning my phone off and you won\u2019t see me for four weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Rowley sprung a surprise on Friday afternoon when he named Nene Macdonald in his Salford Red Devils…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-136060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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