the most shameful reaction has to be that Widnes chief executive James Rule who declined to comment according the Eurosport report I read.

He's put out a strong statement on the Widnes website

A ban from the CC would be the right thing to do IMO.

I was really gutted for the Cas fans to have their moment of glory tarnished by the Widnes morons.

The culprits should all get a life ban from all RL games.

The Widnes club are taking it very seriously and talking about suspending recruitment for next season until they know the final costs which might be imposed on the club. It's all very sad but this could rumble on for a while.

It's a shocking display from so called fans. I hope the Widnes club does ban every single one of these idiots for life and passes on their details to the RL community at large so they can be banned from the sport entirely.

The Bulls are not blameless in bringing bad publicity to the sport over the last few years, but there's a world of difference between a club having financial trouble and drunken louts trying to start fights on national tv

Not sure if I have ever seen anything about bad behavior from the bulls. Seen a couple of teenage lads arguing between us and Leeds a couple of seasons ago but no violent action taken. I don't think it was anything to do with Leeds and Bradford i just think it was teenage lads been teenage lads. I know plenty of lads that use to go to the Leeds away game just for a up.

The Widnes chief exec has made a strong statement very quickly. www.widnesvikings.co.uk/article/ ... james-rule He'll be taking it incredibly seriously and it will get sorted. Hull were surely on the verge of getting competition bans at one point but they got their house in order and so will Widnes. The game often lurches into a woe is me, end of the world lament a bit too easily (and I should know, I'm a right miserable git these days).

The Widnes chief exec has made a strong statement very quickly. www.widnesvikings.co.uk/article/ ... james-rule He'll be taking it incredibly seriously and it will get sorted. Hull were surely on the verge of getting competition bans at one point but they got their house in order and so will Widnes. The game often lurches into a woe is me, end of the world lament a bit too easily (and I should know, I'm a right miserable git these days).

this will be a finacial penalty only ,i feel for the genuine widnes fans that have to be tarnished with the same brush as the people that have let there emotions and beer get the better of them, im sure there will be one or two people in widnes expecting a knock on the door in the next couple of days but all they will get is a slap on the wrist and a fine ,so you carnt expect the RFL to do anything else exept a fine and a slap on the wrist .

It was pretty obvious from the TV shots that there were a fair number of people in the Widnes end who were worse for wear with booze.

I won't call them 'Widnes fans' because they were quite possibly just local chavs who were attracted by the idea of a day out. And they obviously couldn't hold their ale

Lets' not detract from a terrific performance by Castleford

I think the club will come down hard, to be honest.

I guess it's pretty much accepted that it's society's problem and not [ireally[/i the clubs responsibility, but 'Local chavs', or 'not really Widnes fans' or not, rightly or wrongly they were in the Chemics section, presumably bought tickets from the Widnes ticket office and many were wearing club colours, so it reflects on the club and they have to be seen to be 'doing something'. I'm sure they will.

We'll get over it.

We've another moment to come yet as well.

Yep and you was propbably one of them



and you wouldnt of seen anything 1) because not happened and 2) your never there, stick to valley parade



And the last point it would help if you read what he actually put as wasnt saying we were violent he mentioned bad publicity to to financial woes

so he should have done. Theres no such thing as no comment in the pr world. Send him for more media training forthwith.

What it proved, if anything, is the utter idiocy of spending tens of thousands of pounds on dayglo "security" marshals surrounding the pitch looking like a set of garv=den gnomes, they never do anything, and apart from running about a bit into groups, leaving huge gaps wide open for morons to run through, they did little, and achieved nothing. I am not knocking them, btw, the point I am making is that having a cordon of dayglos around the pitch is an utter pointless waste of money, as they aren't allowed into the creowd in the highly unlikely event anything did kick off, and are as much use in stopping drunks invading the pitch as a twelve inch plastic picket fence..

Tear gas would have sorted this very quickly

Tear gas? You're going soft.

Perhaps, but shooting live rounds indiscriminately into the crowd just generates too much paperwork

Typical. I turned over to watch the cycling once Cas had it in the bag. Missed all the excitement.

I didn't see any of it on TV just a couple of k no bs that ran on the pitch when widnes scored.

From the vids I've seen after it wasn't exactly the huysel stadium disaster. I think hull in 2000 were a lot worse. A bit of rough housing that was about it really.

It was more loutishness than hooliganism.

A fine for widnes or a ban from the cc like queens were given and bans once the cops round the idiots up. But it's not the crisis for rl some people will have us believe. It's very very rare this sort of thing.

It was unsavory really. There are many videos going around you tube which were taken by members of the crowd who were appalled by their own fans.

The bits that stick out for me was when the fans went for the stewards, it was pretty clear that one of the fans spat in the stewards face, also the lad that ragged the Cas mascot's head off and started kicking it round like a football.

These 'fans' need banning! embarrassing to think they are associated with the sport

Spitting is assault and if convicted can carry a prison term .

It's also disgusting

I'm not disagreeing with the tenet of your post, but maybe the math.
100 marshals x £6.50/hr x 5 hours = £3,250. Which is probably the equivalent cost of a couple of police for a day.
While, at the time, I wanted each aggressive Widnes fan to receive a good kicking, with hindsight it was diffused without too much bloodshed. Without sufficient numbers of lowly paid stewards or police it could have inflamed the situation further if they had tackled the morons & reduced numbers further. With video evidence now available the police can deal with the trouble makers at their leisure.

I'm not disagreeing with your post either, IMHO a "human barrier" will never stop even a half-hearted pitch invasion like this one, only fences (perish the very thought) could do that.

A police barrier is both OTT , completely unaffordable and unnecessary, and it is unfortunate that many are suggesting we need to change the whole ethos of viewing and policing all RL matches just because of the idiocy of a hundred or so Widnes drunken boneheaded knuckledraggers. We should be able to rely (as in 99.9% of cases we can rely) on RL fans not to behave like these Widnes scumbags. And of course the vast majority of Widnes fans are genuine RL fans not scumbags, it is just they seem to be the go-to club for scumbags at the moment, if what I read is accurate.

What saved this from being a major incident was the restraint of the Castleford fans. However that should not detract from the fact that the knuckledraggers were attempting to start a major incident. The trouble is that BECAUSE there was not a major incident, BECAUSE not many people got punched etc., each knuckledragger can have the same defence
* had a few too many sherbets
* he's normally a good bloke really
* didn't actually hit anybody
* wouldn't actually have done any fighting
* nobody died
* apart from running on a field and waving, he didn't really do much

All of which is basically true, even if it distorts the reality grotesquely, and means so far as any criminal cases are concerned we can expect very little by way of court penalties. If I ran the CPS, I would be looking at for once putting the controversial law of "joint enterprise" to a good instead of bad use, pick the worst thing that happened and then charge all of them with it. Like the mascot being punched, which must surely earn that knuckledragger some jail time. Or charge the lot of them with affray. But I'm not, and CPS won't.

So it is up to the game to sort the individuals out. I can't tell you how much I resent the thought of anyone going to see a RL match being terrorised (as many near the front of the Cas end must have been). RL's reputation as a rare sport where fans can get on is chipped away at by these vermin and I don't think a "deterrent" is needed, nor do i think anything would deter any other club's vermin-in-waiting, but i do think that the process of identifying these lot and giving each a lengthy ban from the game is about the best thing that can be done. The Widnes club will sadly be punished, because that's how it is, but they should take it out on each and every knuckledragger to the max permitted by law.

I realise that only a very few actually threw a punch, but isn't there a charge of, 'actions likely to cause a breach of the peace'? If the whole episode was anything, it was that -at the [ivery[/i least. Though I guess the official punishment from the courts is the equivalent of a couple of 'hail Marys' and a promise not to do it again.

I suspect it will be down to the club to actually apply some sanctions; a few sine die bans maybe?