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Saturday, March 8, 1919 VICTORY over the “easy prey” of St Helens saw Widnes maintain their position at the top of the table in the first season of peacetime rugby after the Great War.
Widnes went ahead through Albert Lawley who exchanged passes with Tommy Higgins before scoring in the corner.
After several near misses, Higgins added the second, with Dick Wailing and J Shone scoring after the break. Jim Matthews contributed five goals in the 22-3 win. ● WIDNES VIKINGS: On This Day is available now at £9.99 from the Vikings Superstore. WIGAN WARRIORS ................... 32 WIDNES VIKINGS ...................... 16
WIDNES found themselves on the wrong end of a second half rout as they went down 32-16 at Wigan Warriors last Friday evening.
Having seen their team take a 16-4 lead into the dressing rooms at half-time, the Vikings’ fans who made the trip to The DW Stadium may have thought braving the Arctic cold was going to be well worth their while.
But Shaun Wane’s men simply overran Widnes after the break to record an ultimately comfortable victory.
Widnes boss Denis Betts felt that despite the first half scoreline some of the seeds of defeat were sown in the opening 40 minutes when his side spent long periods in their own half.
Certainly by the end of the match, the Vikings were looking a tired outfit.
Betts said: “We worked really hard in the first half to give ourselves that scoreline but we didn’t have any ball.
“We defended our goalline with great desire but we had to do that much work because we just couldn’t finish our sets or we gave dumb penalties away.
“I think that caught up with us a bit in the second half.
“Overall we dug in and fought hard but they pulled away from us in the last 10 or 15 minutes.
“I’m disappointed with the soft tries they scored from really close to the ruck on our goalline.
“We just got physically beaten up in the second half and that’s just not acceptable for where we want to be.
“We’ve done a lot more defending than we’d have liked.
“We failed to get out of our half with any kind of consistency and twice we failed to make touch with penalties which is just creating problems for yourself.
“In the second half, Wigan came out and ran hard and straight and we had to work our hardest to make the tackles we had to make.
“We stuck in the fight for quite a long time and when we were down 20-16 I thought if we could just get a bit of field-position we ● might just slide in for one because we’ve got some good attacking threats in our team, but we just couldn’t get that field-position.”
Wigan’s first half performance was a curious mixture of determined running, indiscipline and errors.
Having tasted defeat the week before at Warrington, the Warriors certainly had plenty of fire in their bellies but found executing near the Widnes line a problem in the face of some committed Vikings’ defence.
It was Widnes who opened the scoring when back-rower Matt Whitley latched on to Tom Gilmore’s well-weighted grubberkick to slide under the posts.
Needless penalties conceded by Sam Tomkins and Ben Flower respectively allowed Gilmore to slot over two simple penalty goals to make it 10-0.
On 28 minutes, a superb break by hard-running second-row Sam Wilde set up the position for Joe Mellor to send Stefan Marsh in at the right corner with Gilmore goalling from wide out.
It looked like Widnes would take a 16-0 lead into the break but they invited their opponents to attack their tryline with a couple of errors and Joe Burgess pulled four points back just before the hooter.
The Vikings found themselves on the back foot from the outset on the resumption but terrific scrambling defence kept Wigan out.
It seemed that Betts’s men had ridden out the storm until Warriors’ prop-forward Ryan Sutton crashed between two would-be tacklers to pull six points back on 53 minutes.
It was now one way traffic as Widnes struggled for possession and field-position. Still, the manner of Wigan’s next try was a disappointment with Thomas Leuluai wriggling over from dummy-half.
The home side hit the front on 64 minutes when a sweeping attack saw George Williams send Liam Farrell racing under the posts to make it 20-16.
The Vikings’ attempts to hit back became increasingly desperate and the game was up when the outstanding Sam Tomkins fielded a Gilmore chip on the burst and ran 70 metres for the killer try.
Winger Tom Davies finished the scoring for the Warriors with Tomkins adding a fine goal to make the final score 32-16.
The only consolation for Widnes fans as they headed home – at least they could get out of the bitter cold.