Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 9:20 am  

Listenup94 wrote:

that first tackle play was one of the dumbest things I’ve seen

Yep, I was spitting chips at that one, as well as "several" occasions where we were pushed into touch .... when we shouldn't have been.

One thing I forgot to mention in my match analysis ................ we were 8 points behind with 15 minutes to go and Widnes kept slowing it down and conceding penalties. I would have taken 2 points to bring us within 1 score. I remember Bradford, coached by the "clever" John Kear, doing this against us a few seasons back at the Shay. They were 7 points behind and took 2 from a penalty and I remember the folk around me laughing saying what a daft thing to do. But they just didn't get it .... and Bradford went on to win. I suppose it would only have got us a point (possibly!) but that would have been vital as our points difference is much better than Batley and London.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:00 am  

Watching Grix's interview you literally could have been watching the same interview from many of our games this season. A couple of things stood out, he sounded frustrated when asked about changing the team around and talked about not dropping players as they had done well previously but this is something that has been a highlight of our season in that players have kept their places despite making costly errors in different games yet we have a lad whos last game for us was a stand out performance and he has not played since. It just sends the wrong message out to the players and lacklustre performances could very well be a byproduct of that.
Grix also talked about how great Keyes was but I think if we are all honest he looked like a player who had not played for many weeks and I am reserving judgement until I see the replays but he was also part of the trio that conceded 3 tries in the first half and although it is often the winger who ends up looking silly, the problem usually starts further in. To get caught out once is fine, twice you need to start asking questions but 3 times is just awful. It will go down as just another game that we could have done a whole lot better in.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:09 am  

Tony Fax wrote:

Yep, I was spitting chips at that one, as well as "several" occasions where we were pushed into touch .... when we shouldn't have been.

One thing I forgot to mention in my match analysis ................ we were 8 points behind with 15 minutes to go and Widnes kept slowing it down and conceding penalties. I would have taken 2 points to bring us within 1 score. I remember Bradford, coached by the "clever" John Kear, doing this against us a few seasons back at the Shay. They were 7 points behind and took 2 from a penalty and I remember the folk around me laughing saying what a daft thing to do. But they just didn't get it .... and Bradford went on to win. I suppose it would only have got us a point (possibly!) but that would have been vital as our points difference is much better than Batley and London.

I thought exactly the same at the time about taking the two points on offer. There was plenty of time and we would have had the ball back with over ten minutes left. All might have been different with that as Widnes were rocking a little. The Widnes` fullbacks tackle on Keyes under the posts was the match-winner in my eyes.
I had high hopes this year after i felt we had recruited quite well but didn`t find a good defensive centre or two.
Just too many errors and dumb plays throughout the season.

Onwards we march towards next season....

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:19 am  

cowfax wrote:

I thought exactly the same at the time about taking the two points on offer. There was plenty of time and we would have had the ball back with over ten minutes left. All might have been different with that as Widnes were rocking a little. The Widnes` fullbacks tackle on Keyes under the posts was the match-winner in my eyes.
I had high hopes this year after i felt we had recruited quite well but didn`t find a good defensive centre or two.
Just too many errors and dumb plays throughout the season.

Onwards we march towards next season....

Biggest mistake in my opinion this year Grix releasing two good quality centres and thinking that he could replace them by playing wingers in that spot. It was finally put right in bringing Crooks in but until then every man and his dog who has watched rugby could tell us we needed 2 centres. Again just putting it out there for any doubt, I think Maizen and McComb are both good players its just unfortunatley as wingers they are behind 2 of the best in the division. On Tibbs his attacking at times looks really good but unfortunatley his defense is so weak that it is hard to say if he will ever make it at this level as a first team regular. Stranger things have happened but going on team selection this season it does not look great for him sadly.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:34 am  

Tony Fax wrote:

The effort was there, they bust a gut to get over the line near the end, but the execution was poor, like a rudderless ship. Eg trying to acrobat in the corner on the first tackle from a scrum 10 yards from the Widnes line. I thought we had them at half time, it just needed composure which just wasn't there in the 2nd half, just headless chicken stuff with the biggest threat coming from darts by AOB at the PTBs. All very frustrating against a very ordinary Widnes who had no stand out quality.

The irony about the defeat is that Widnes have now got a sniff of the top 6 and could do us a favour by beating Batley (whose form is worse than ours - must be the 1895 cup hangover!) and London in the next couple of weeks. All is not lost.

Grix didn't seem to hang around after the match ...... he was in the Vocation in town within an hour of the final hooter, not that it means much I suppose. Just saying.

Let's hope his beer wasn't as hazy as his tactics! Yet again it was a game there for the taking and for a host of reasons we weren't up to it. Widnes were poor and I bet they couldn't quite believe it going back down the M62. Surely after the 2nd try down our left SG should have changed it but no, we concede a third identical try and even though we somehow levelled it by half time we never really looked like taking control. It is so frustrating as we all know this squad should be doing a whole lot better. Finally, it would be good if SG was asked directly in his after match interview why Tom Inman isn't playing.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:56 am  

Greg Florimos Boots wrote:

Biggest mistake in my opinion this year Grix releasing two good quality centres

Agree. Ince wouldn't have scored any tries yesterday had Worthington been there - I notice he appears to be playing in the 2nd row for Barrow at the mo. Also the other big mistake is the Maher/Doro/King disaster. You get the feeling that if those 3 would have worked out, we'd have done much better this season. Maher seems to have disappeared from the Dewsbury team sheet, wonder if he's had enough (or can't even make a League 1 team!).

Regarding Inman, Grix won't drop Moore and can't drop AOB and there's no room for a 3rd hooker. Problem is that neither of those 3 can really slot into another position, unlike when we had Beswick/Penky/Gleeson when Beswick could slot into the halves or loose. Having said that I would still put Inman before Moore.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 11:11 am  

Tony Fax wrote:

Regarding Inman, Grix won't drop Moore and can't drop AOB and there's no room for a 3rd hooker. Problem is that neither of those 3 can really slot into another position, unlike when we had Beswick/Penky/Gleeson when Beswick could slot into the halves or loose. Having said that I would still put Inman before Moore.

Grix has been trying to convince us for a couple of seasons that Moore can play as a loose/extra pivot type role but as we saw yesterday our pack was already getting rolled and loosing a big body and leaving another hooker on did us no favors like it hasn't really for much of the season. At one point yesterday he had McComb playing that role and you just wonder now if he is totally devoid of ideas on how to change things for the better.

It seems there was a big shift on Facebook yesterday with a lot of people who had been in support of Grix seem to have turned so maybe we were just early in our predictions that we could do with a change but sat in 8th place it does seem we may have been right. Liam Finn looks like he has a big job on his hands going on these performances.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 11:20 am  

I could see why Grix let both last seasons centres move on. Both showed little threat in attack and are now being used in the second row at their clubs.
The issue is we didn`t find replacements. To be fair decent centres are like rocking horse ****.
I like both Tibbs and Mcomb but they don`t have the physicality in defence. Maizen might replace Salty next year but he also is no centre.
Crooks sometimes wafts at attackers so he would not be my answer to this problem, but time may tell.
Inman is still learning but i hope we can hang on next season to push whichever hookers we may have.
Our recruitment in the forwards looked good but for one reason or another Maher/Doro/King didn`t turn up.
Having watched for over 60 years I have witnessed may lows and a few highs so chin up boys.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 11:44 am  

Just watching the highlights of those 3 tries as I wanted to re-watch before posting my thoughts but the 1st one Walmsley didn't trust Sutcliffe, he did a great job passing off the lead runner but Walmsley bit in when he didn't have to and this should have been easily dealt with.

The second one is woeful, somehow they manage to get the numbers completley wrong and Widnes end up with a 5 on 3 which they executed pretty well to be fair to them. Between Keyes and Pickersgill they have to do a better job organising there and in the end its poor defensive reads by Keyes and Sutcliffe that cost the try this time.

The 3rd one again numbers are wrong and we can't sort it in time and it starts to go amiss where Keyes does not pass his man off to Kav so Keyes can keep sliding, hard to see what Sutcliffe is doing but looks like a bad read which to be fair is caused initially by Keyes mistake. This is really basic stuff and Widnes really didn't have to do much to score those 3 tries and they could have easily been prevented. A thing that stands out in all 3 is that there seems to be very little in the way of communication between the players for these tries, that's impossible to say for sure but the end result seems to suggest that as well.

Re: Widnes Vikings. : Mon Aug 28, 2023 11:50 am  

Aye, left edge all over the place and down to Keyes first game back and Sooty not be fully integrated into the squad.

Even so worst communications / understanding i’ve seen for a long time.