A good lead for us at half-time, but I’d say the games been spoilt for the neutrals by the red card.
Decent enough.
Scored some nice tries.
Thought Else went well.
Crying out for a couple more props. Need more size and experience.
Less said about the commentators- the better.
Happy with that. Though Whitehaven will be more of a test and tell us more about where we are.
Wonder why Cook and Clough didn’t play? Put those two and Jewitt in and the pack would have a much better look about it.
None of the young lads looked out of place today which is encouraging.
Good result in a fine looking stadium.
Impressed with a few of our younger players and was pleasantly surprised by Adam Lawton, who played well today.
Hope the injury is not serious.
A worthwhile run out, some nice tries scored and liked the fact we threw the ball about.
Need Cook, Clough and Jewitt, or at least 2 of them, otherwise we will struggle against decent Championship opposition in the forwards. Pleasantly surprised with how well the Lyons/Else combo did at hooker.
is logan still here?
A good lead for us at half-time, but I’d say the games been spoilt for the neutrals by the red card.
I suppose beggars can't be choosers and it was nice to have a live game of rugby league to watch, but the absence of replays was a limiting factor, I wasn't sure they'd got the ball down properly for their try and I was waiting to see it again, but no! As others have suggested limitations of the commentary team and referee (although to be fair to the ref it may have more to do with the commentator not having a clue what the ref was doing!), didn't help either!
The red card probably killed them off, but we still played some nice stuff.
If Rangi stays OK I'm sure they will get some benefit from him, but I guess he is always going to be high risk. Henson I'm not sure about, his first game so can't be too critical, but pretty anonymous, the rest for the most part tried hard.
A decent game to shake the cobwebs off a bit!
Anyone see what our second sin binning was for, it looked to be just an ordinary tackle?
Tackle below the knee from behind.
Don't know why their second pile driver wasn't a red card tbh - neither did Matt Smith. He was asking the ref!
O'Neil is taking and on the bus back home, thankfully.
Probably will get a rest until everything is ok'd by the medics.
A good lead for us at half-time, but I’d say the games been spoilt for the neutrals by the red card.
I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and it was nice to have a live game of rugby league to watch, but the absence of replays was a limiting factor, I wasn’t sure they’d got the ball down properly for their try and I was waiting to see it again, but no! As others have suggested limitations of the commentary team and referee (although to be fair to the ref it may have more to do with the commentator not having a clue what the ref was doing!), didn’t help either! The red card probably killed them off, but we still played some nice stuff. If Rangi stays OK I’m sure they will get some benefit from him, but I guess he is always going to be high risk. Henson I’m not sure about, his first game so can’t be too critical, but pretty anonymous, the rest for the most part tried hard. A decent game to shake the cobwebs off a bit!
You could get a full speed replay just by going back on the iPlayer using the time bar at the bottom. I did this quite a bit during the game.
Anyone see what our second sin binning was for, it looked to be just an ordinary tackle?
Dangerous tackle at the leg of a standing player.
Decent Performance for a first run out with no friendlies in the bag.
Poor opposition with only Rangi carrying any kind of threat, Henson was a passenger and looked way off pace and you could clearly see his lack for RL experience.
For us the backline looked good and our attacking push was good all game. Lawton looked like he will do some damage in attack, but needs to clean up his defensive contact which is lazy and shows poor technique. Will get some stick for this but we looked way better with O'niell off the pitch, young lad who will improve with matches and time, but was running around like a headless chicken at the start of the game and lost contact constantly, which is not great in a LF. Though to be fair the whole team started somewhat slowly.
Whitehaven will be a much better test for us next week, hopefully we will have some of our Front row back available and then we will have a much better guide for how we can expect our season to pan out.
All in all great to be watching Rugby league, and more specifically Widnes once more.
I was worried during that long period when O'Neill was receiving treatment, more so when the camera panned away.Feared it was something really bad.
Just hope that he recovers fully, to play or not. Our very young props worked hard against quite a big opposition. With more experienced mates in the pack they should be ok. At least now SF knows how they respond on their own.
Adam Lawton looked more like a player to do some damage. Needs to gel with Spedding and show some urgency when he has made a tackle to get back in the line! Else looked sharp as did all the youngsters.
Main plus imo will be that SF knows how his youngsters respond in reality rather than training. We shouldn't forget that Newcastle beat WW and scored 68 last year so SF had a pretty good idea what the challenge was.