Vikings are left
Sunday, March 2, 2003 BBC TV viewers saw coach Neil Kelly kicking an ice bucket around the dressing room as he ripped into his Widnes team at half-time of the fifth round Challenge Cup clash at Wakefield.
Trinity got off to a flier with two cheap penalties in the first four minutes before Vikings’ centre Adam Hughes converted his own 90 metre interception try in the 18th minute.
The hosts levelled but Dean Lawford burrowed over and with Hughes’s conversion Widnes led by six points before Trinity again drew level at 12-12.
Dominating the second half, Widnes regained the lead through Hughes and despite the sin-binning of Deon Bird, Trinity were kept at bay as Steve McCurrie sealed a 22-12 win two minutes from time. ● WIDNES VIKINGS: On This Day is available now at £9.99 from the Vikings Superstore. ● Widnes’s Danny Craven touches down for his four-pointer against the Warriors. ● WIDNES VIKINGS ...................... 26 WIGAN WARRIORS ................... 28
WIDNES conceded four tries in the final quarter of the match as they went down 28-26 to Wigan Warriors at the Select Security Stadium on Friday evening.
The Vikings were good value for the 26-12 lead they held on the hour but a few defensive lapses combined with one or two harsh decisions allowed Wigan to sneak a win.
The try that eventually snatched the game for the Warriors came just five minutes from time when centre Oliver Gildart crossed for his second four- ● pointer after wing partner Joe Burgess had broken free.
Widnes boss Denis Betts was happy to see his side improve markedly on their performance in the 28-16 loss to Huddersfield a fortnight earlier, but he was understandably frustrated at missing out on two valuable points.
Betts said: “I thought we were in control of the game.
“I knew what was coming but we just did some dumb things; that was the most vexing thing about the game.
“We’d done so much right but one or two errors at key moments led to us losing.
“Across the board I thought everybody played well but you can’t ever switch off against Wigan.
“We’re 14 points up at one stage and they need to score three times. But they get the tries they need and every one of them comes from poor errors on an edge. We’ve worked hard on getting those decisions right.
“There was a bit of fatigue from us and some smarts from Wigan; they know how to put themselves in a position to get penalties.
“There were two or three incidents in that game that hurt us, one of them being a try that wasn’t a try and a couple of dubious penalties.”
The build-up to Friday’s game was somewhat farcical.
It was scheduled to be played at the DW Stadium but was switched at the eleventh hour to Widnes with the Warriors apparently deciding that with Wigan Athletic Football Club due to play at the ground the following afternoon, the pitch would not hold up to the traffic.
As it turned out, the match was played on the Vikings’ iPitch in conditions about as good as you can expect in February.
Both sides had early chances but eventually it was Wigan who took the lead on 14 minutes when scrum-half Thomas Leuluai muscled his way over from closerange with Morgan Escare con-