The Unknown Chemic wrote:
It's probably right, that's what it looks like as we have had a run of wins and we've gone up a few places. However, it's the nature of those wins that leads to the realistic views on here. Closely fought, plucky victories against sides at the bottom end that Leigh and Fev regularly rack up decent scores against. OK, a win against Batley was a good result, but again, the nature of that game was that we were about 12 inches away from a draw. (Late penalty attempt from them fell short by about that amount after the ref had actually picked up the kicking tee and moved it back as the kicker was trying to steal a metre or so!).
Also factor in our rather pedestrian one up the middle style and you get a general feeling that we are a 3rd/4th place team. We win games by flashes from individuals, rather than being a well coached, drilled team. Some of our organisation when attacking is shambolic, other times we look like it's 1989 all over again.
Saying that, if we get a game this season where all our players put in performances they are capable of I think we could actually beat Leigh and Fev. Sadly, I've just never seen this happen since the first 60 mins of the Fev away game in the NRC group. It always seems that half the team have a nightmare and the other half pull stuff out to win the game - that will work against bottom half teams, but not the top ones. And it's not the same players week in week out, it's right across the team. Players look like world beaters one week then have a shocker the week after.
It's an odd season and will probably have a few twists and turns left in it yet.
I agree, what worries me is that for 55 mins of the Batley match followed the same pattern we have seen all season. The defeats against Leigh, the defeat at Batley and the home defeat to Hunslet were all nothing games where the opposition simply put more effort in, ran harder, tackled harder - basically they wanted the win more than us. It took a shocking decsion from the ref almost half way into the 2nd half for us to come alive. If the players had played with the same intensity from the start, I have no doubt that the result wouldn't even have been in question. We basically gave up in the 2 Leigh games as they racked up 18 tries over the 2 games. If we give it our all and we still lose, fair enough, but from what I have seen so far there's no guarantee that we'll put in an 80 min effort.
We could win, we could just lose or we could get battered, I don't think there is any way of predicting what Widnes team comes out really. Its entirely possible that we'll see one half of fantastic rugby followed by 40 mins of rubbish. If you were a betting man the sensible money would be on a comfortable Leigh win IMO.
