Chance is lost on a blank night
WIDNES VIKINGS ........................ 0 WIGAN WARRIORS ..................... 7
WIDNES had a chance to take a giant leap towards a guaranteed Top 8 place when they went head-to-head with Wigan last Thursday evening – but they blew it.
The 7-0 defeat suffered by the Vikings fails to adequately tell the story of a night of many missed opportunities at the Select Security Stadium.
The Warriors came to Widnes with an understrength outfit and suffered more injury woes during the course of the 80 minutes.
But Denis Betts’s men failed to apply the finishing touch to several gilt-edged scoring chances they had in the contest.
Matt Whitely, Patrick Ah Van, Rhys Hanbury, Kevin Brown and Chris Dean will all look back and think about what might have been.
It left the Vikings boss frustrated after the match.
Betts said: “I think we had four chances and they had one.
“They score theirs, we don’t score ours and we lose the game.
“They completed at 80 per cent and we completed at 50 per cent but I’d still want us to do what we did.
“But I want Pat Ah Van to catch the ball and dot it down; I want Rhys to keep hold of the ball and put it over the line; I want Chris Dean to keep hold of the ball.
“I’ve said to Chris he’s going to have to score the best try of his life to stop thinking about the try he didn’t score tonight.
“He’s got some work to do next week – he’s got to go 90 metres instead of 75!
“It’s hard not to have admira- tion for what Wigan did.
“They came here with a beaten-up side and got further beaten-up in the game, but they know how to win.
“I thought we were the better side today in the rugby sense – but we lost the game of rugby.”
After an evenly-contested start, Widnes created the first real scoring chance but winger Corey Thompson was bundled into touch at the corner.
At the other end of the field, the Warriors were getting no change out of committed Widnes defence.
The Vikings were looking the more likely of the two teams to break the deadlock and came very close on 25 minutes but Whitley knocked-on attempting to scoop up Joe Mellor’s kick with the tryline beckoning.
An even more clear cut opportunity went begging when Ah Van failed to hold onto a Lloyd White pass a couple of yards from the whitewash.
Hanbury side-stepped past Wigan full-back Lewis Tierney but was superbly tackled just short by the covering Ben Flower.
A frustrating first half from a Vikings perspective ended with the scoreline still blank.
Widnes captain Brown looked certain to score from dummy-half early in the second period but lost the ball as he tried to ground it.
Almost inevitably, having survived so many near-misses, it was Wigan that took the lead.
Swift passing to the left created the space for Josh Charnley to cut inside the cover with Matty Smith adding the extras.
There were still 23 minutes remaining when Smith added a drop-goal to make it 7-0 but there was already the feeling it might well be enough.
So it proved despite a fantastic 60-metre run by the hard-working Dean which ended as he spilled the ball in Charnley’s tackle with the line barely inches away.
It was just one of those nights for the Vikings. Corey Thompson tries to get in at the corner but falls short this time.