Early doors yet surely.

Toulouse do not look physically big enough and are so off the pace defensively it was pretty worrying. However this is a huge step up for some of their players who will not be used to this sort of intensity. They can only get better I suppose, and I'm sure they will. They know what they need to improve on now (a lot of things) and can build on that over this season and next. That's the beauty of not being able to be relegated, there's no need to panic.

As for Widnes: excellent. Attacking flair. Defensively strong. Good territory. Good amount of possession. They just looked like they were doing everything right. Toa Kohe-Love their only weak link, giving away penalty after penalty. They're looking good on the park, the crowd was big, stadium looks fantastic, they've got English coaching staff, a lot of talented young English players, good sponsorship and are run well. They look like a SL side in the Championship at the moment. They have a lot of obstacles to overcome as a heartlands club if they want to get into the SL, and if they continue in this vein then they can't be turned down for 2012.
Can Halifax and Leigh top that? We'll see. This competition is looking good!

Think I'll take that line as well, but they're going to have to show a hell of a lot of improvement if they're going to be anything other than a bottom three side.

Not sure i comprehend. Licence applications start from scratch and there'll be plenty of other "heartlands" clubs going through the same process.

Bit of confusion there. Sporting Life site gives it as 1,700

Sky gave it as 5016 or something - I only glanced but it was definitely 5k+

Just over 5000 there I believe. A very good attendance considering there will have been little/no away support.

Very impressive from Widnes. They looked a well drilled outfit and it was a great team performance from 1-17. Scott Yates and Paddy Flynn are they from the Widnes academy?

Toulouse didn't look up to speed. A poor pre-season will not have helped but they can't use that as an excuse. Widnes were very good but they have a lot of work to do. But it is too early to make rash judgements about their worth in the championship.

Yeah it was something like that.

Toulose's kit looked horrible... it looked baggy & heavy it was hanging of everyone of their players excpet for their hooker...

You know more than most on here what this division has to offer (most Leigh-Fax games, for a start!) so let's concentrate what we have now rather than what might be in 2012

Free tickets out in force at Widnes again I see. It was only last season when they were writing to league express saying how they don't need such 'gimmicks' to pull in a decent crowd.

wot about the guy who bared his bum all evening!
ave its mum

You taking the pi$$?

Just under a 1000 were free tickets and the attendance was 5,071

according the the PA.I think one of those kids doing the scores in French were French so not sure whether Toulose had a say in that.

Scott Yates is from the Academy. Flynn is a St Helens lad, not sure if he was at Saints or signed from an amateur club.

To answer the earlier questions, the kids on the PA were from local schools and were announcing scorers and interchanges in something approximating to French.

Yes both Flynn and Yates are academy lads. As were Ostick, Simm and Grady tonight. both Flynn and Yates have been superb so far this season.

The kids voice after every try was 'supposed' to be in French, announcing every try/sub etc.

Toulouse are way off the pace at the moment, I hope tonight was an eye opener for them for the rest of the season to get up to speed, they'll get better.

As for us, that's an 88-0 and a 70-0, albeit against Saddleworth and Toulouse but you can only play whats infront of you. Pretty rare for a new coach to start a job after those scorelines!

Att: 5,071. Only a few school kids in the east stand, at a guess just over 4,000 paying Widnes speccies there tonight.

An academy, community and apprenticeship scheme which have been awarded World Class status, great young players who were starting to come through in the last 2 years... and the RFL made a point of stating our home grown contribution was not upto scratch in our SL application feedback.

Laughable. It really is.

Ostick and Flynn in particular have good futures ahead of them i suspect.

Wondered what the kids announcement thing was, though they'll do well to beat the Russian announcements we had when we first played Locomotiv in 2003

I was just about to post but somebody decided to lock it after a bit of thread drift

So here goes

Very dissapointing , the lads on TV tried thier best to make excuses but if that is how they [ Toulouse prepare for a season in this league then thier inclusion is/will be a big mistake

Without doubt they were not ready for a SL franchise , so well done the RFL on that decision

Looking forward to seeing a proper Championship match next week from the Shay

I've cleaned this thread.

Now, it's really, really simple: we are not going to have thread about a Widnes match turned into yet another boring slanging match or re-hashing of the franchise debate.

We'll discuss the match and the match alone.

And the same thing applies to any threads in coming weeks and months about Widnes games – and about games involving Celtic, for that matter.

Thanks for that assesment Wellsy..
5017 in the championship for a thursday night telly game without any away fans is pretty decent going.
I believe that if tonight had been a SL game with the lure that such a match has and if the away team had not been one of the usual suspects and brought a normal following we could have topped 9 maybe 10k tonight..
the club has made great strides in promoting the games and it was a pleasure that it all looked so good on the TV

Boooo!!
only joking

I'll say again, very well done tonight and you can only beat what is in front of you. You won and did that impressively enough taking most of the opportunities presented to you and created a lot through good play of your own.

It will be interesting to see how Widnes go next week against Fax as it will give a bit more of an idea of how they will get on the rest of this year. I know it is only one game but I think it will be more indicative of what test they will face week in week out. That tonight wasn't near to that.

Toulouse, I thought, were shocking. Somebody gave them credit in defense but I can't really give them too much myself. I was willing them to score near the end just to get them off the mark and up and running but it wasn't to be.

All in all good to see national league/championship back as I loved it when we used to feature on there and loved the places I visited in NL1 and NL2 and enjoyed myself so much I will definitely go back to a lot of the places as a neutral if possible.

I only asked a question

But fair enough

A crap side , a crap match , embarassing really