Newall bemoans ‘shocking discipline’ despite win over Whitchurch

Widnes II 20 Whitchurch II 7 WIDNES RUFC’s second XV moved up to sixth place in the Halbro North West Leagues Division Two South with a scrappy success over Whitchurch last Saturday.

Tom Griffiths captained the side with Josh Paton promoted to first-team duties.

A Tom Beech penalty was the only score of an uninspiring first half littered with mistakes and penalties.

Widnes were very unlucky not to score a try, however, as Liam Lawton could not take a Ste Curphey pass in the only real chance of a poor opening 40 minutes.

Whitchurch came out firing in the second half as Widnes again invited their opponents back into the game.

Widnes lost possession and gave away a penalty to allow Whitchurch into their 22 and their wing evaded a covering Joe Purcell to a kick to touch the ball down and score a converted try.

Whitchurch taking a 7-3 lead sparked the Wids into life.

Josh Salter claimed the first of three second half Widnes tries, getting on the end of a backs’ move involving Josh Argent, Curphey and Lawton to score.

Salter then turned provider as Widnes again built pressure in the Whitchurch half, the young full-back providing the final pass to allow Purcell to dive over in the corner.

Lawton rounded off the scoring, backing up well from Curphey who made a break and drew the full-back to put him over. Beech landed his second conversion of the game to wrap up a 20-7 victory.

Speaking after the game, head coach, Dan Newall, said: “Today was extremely frustrating for us.

“We may have got the win and the second half was much improved but we have all come off the pitch frustrated with the game.

“We made life difficult for ourselves when we didn’t need to. We spoke about our discipline before the game and it was absolutely shocking.

“We spoke about what we needed to do with the ball and we went away from the game plan and made far too many mistakes and struggled to get good service to Josh Argent at 10.

“We put the pressure on ourselves we just need to cut out the mistakes and if we do make them back our defence instead of trying to force things and give stupid, needless penalties away.

“Having said that my messages to the boys after the game was for us to play badly and still be convincing winners shows we are a quality side so we just need to touch up on those key areas.

“We have a week off next week which I think will do us well so its two really big weeks of training before a tough away trip to New Brighton.”