I obviously don't see Widnes every week, but your pack looks very lightweight. Is this where your injuries are? Also, Webster was awful tonight, this could be due to the pack losing the armwrestle, but he looked a shadow of himself tonight.

Yep the pack that looked good preseason has been dented by injuries... Haggerty, Pickersgil, Allen and Smith currently absent. Jordan James only seemed to appear for one spell last night which put a greater burden on thing.

As for Webster. If your talking about his former days at KR he is a shadow. However he's not gone bad for us but seemed to suffer with the collective confidence sap that we seem to be suffering from right now.

I don't think you should lose faith, I think you will be int' mix by the playoffs.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if anyone is losing faith after that game. Believe it or not I think there were a few promising signs in that game. We started off badly but our defence improved after the very shaky opening period. We were actually tackling around the legs last night and to an extent slowing the ptb down a bit better.

If we can cut out the mistakes as V4E has mentioned above we will improve dramtically. That and get a few more players back obviously. We will deffo be there or there abouts come the end of the season.

Cullen or Mcormack ??

I'll take the latter thankyou very much

Prepare to be very dissapointed

Gary... Gary.. listen to me.. what have you taken???? This is very important!!! what have you taken??
You're delirious and need to seek immediate medical attention..

Agree with Vikingman, absolute garbage last night. Have watched the under 16's and under 18's recently and they play far more expansive rugby,and put the first team to shame with their enthusiasm.

Leigh's line speed around the ptb totally shut your forwards down. They do it to everyone if you let them, it doesn't take a genius to work out that you need to move the ball quicker and run wider at their weaker, slower moving flanks. The fitness at Leigh is very good and is the reason for their league position, as it was for Barrow last year, however you can only be so fit and the Leigh pack needs to be dragged around the pitch as much as possible to reduce its effectiveness and create room for your own strike players.

Hmmm, perhaps I should have posted this before the match, if Cullen had read it things might have been different...

Our line speed was absolutely amateur. Gifted Leigh easy metres. TKL's tackling was atrocious. We need to get Grady (who did not let anybody down) back in the centres and play real forwards in the pack so we don't get bullied. I think Ford is a class act, by the way.

Left hopelessly exposed by he got stepped by Jock, but there again you could argue that we shouldn't have been allowed to get in the position of taking on Ford on his tod.

The performance last night was embaressing at times, Widnes half back's were never init, couldn't belive how bad Thackery was, Webster shown up by Paul, Ford at full back is terrible, the forwards looked like they didn't want to now, as on numerous occasions the backs were driving us out.

Alot of work needs to be done before the next match.

It wouldn’t have made ant difference. Our pack was too lightweight and inexperienced to deal with Leigh’s big, aggressive forwards last night. We were out fought down the middle and struggled to make progress up-field. We ended up throwing out wild, desperate passes in an attempt to find gaps, thus making mistakes. Halfbacks cannot flourish under such circumstances.

There was only one man in the pack who attempted to get in the faces of the Leigh pack and, yet again, that man was Jim Gannon. The rest were intimidated or not experienced to deal with it. Jordan James didn’t get a lot of game time, but he’s been a big disappointment since his return and I hope that Heckenberg, when he eventually plays, gives us a bit more umpty going forward and in defence. We’re definitely going to need Pickersgill and Mark Smith back for the play-offs. Kirk Netherton did OK, but we just don’t have anyone to spell him and Danny Hulme didn’t make the team last night. Grady should not be in the pack and, even if it means dropping Toa or Gardener, he should remain in the centres. This is also a symptom of relying entirely on one player to do the goal kicking.

I’m sick to death of seeing us out-muscled every season. It’s the same old problem. We’ve recruited a great pack this season, only to see it decimated by injury. Surely our luck must change soon?

I’ve been saying all season that our kicking game is non-existent. With a weakened pack, a good kicking game could have got us the important field position we were failing to get by running the ball. Ball-in-hand Thackeray and Webster all over Ridyard and Paul, but Ridyard can do something both of these can’t – kick! He did it last night to great affect. Our best kick was put in by Kirk Netherton. Perhaps he should take over the kicking duties while he’s here?

I wouldn’t keep Webster here next season, but look for a good scrum half with an excellent kicking game. It’s rumored that his 2-year contract is worth £60,000. Now I’m not sure if this is true, but he must be on a decent wedge, and that wedge would be better spent on someone else next season imo. Perhaps we can bring in a good Aussie from the NRL on a 3 year contract, with part of next years earnings deferred to the last two years – which will hopefully be in SL.

If we can get Pickersgill, Smith, Coyle and Heckenberg back for the run-in, we’ll still be a force to be reckoned with. We’re not that far off it even now. We ran Fev close and won the second half of last nights game against Leigh. Those players above may well close that small gap. Our backline is excellent, but they need that platform which can be provided by a good, big, aggressive pack and a good kicking game. We’ve had no continuity, with players going out injured to be replaced by youngsters, players coming back from injury and new loan players being brought in and Dual-Reg players coming and going. Cullen’s head must be battered with it all. I honestly cannot blame him- yet.

Robbie Paul did nothing. Martin Ridyard was their real star.

I too thought Robbie had a quiet game. Riddy ran the show behind a very dominant pack. He was also very well protected by the pack and seemed to rarely get caught with the ball in hand.

What was also disappointing was that we gifted Leigh a 12 start but then we started to settle and we made 2, 3 or 4 breaks / half breaks out wide. It was obvious we weren't going to get any change out of them in the middle + as Off! Number Seven said we should have been dragging around the pitch more often. Unfortunatley we went down the middle far too often and basically played into their hands. One factor for this however was the lack of options. Webbo never runs with the ball, last night he must have tried it 4 or 5 times and was almost certainly it was because he had no-one on his shoulder to make the run out wide or on the fringes.

I wasn't surprised by Thackeray's performance, he's a wonder runner and has got a great dummy, but IMO his kicking isn't great and he isn't exactly known for his passing skills either -Dennis Moran eat your heart out.

sponsors 'man of the match' was robbie BLESS. He had an ok game, but in a side that had a fantastic start to the game.

Straight to the point, end of? that isnt like you Vikingman! I think we need a bit of belief and "bounce_back_ability", I also think we should have run out the full team we had against fev if we could, at least they had our deserved support at the end of the game. I will give it three weeks.... crap? I will reserve my judgement till then and that will include the linguistic Mr P C whilst his talk of the game is excellent on the tele how basic does it get when planning a match? x

Just read Robbie Paul's programme notes for the Featherstone game and he praises Widnes for 'intelligently changing their style of attack midway through the game'. That is why he believes Leigh had problems for the first part of the second half. I suppose that knocks on the head the theories of some, that Paul Cullen only has one style of play!

Are people in widnes beginning to realise that cullen's coaching ability is very limited I wonder?

If his coaching ability is as limited as you say why did it take Warrington six years to find out?

Over friendly with the board and club owner Simon Moran so therefore they stuck with him out of some misguided sense of loyalty when all around the ground people could see it was going wrong,and the team were going backwards rather than forwards. The fact that Tony Smith had a trophy in the cabinet a mere 5 months after taking over the same group of players Cullen had coached proves my point I think. He is limited as a coach,will be a good mid table SL coach but you will never win major silverware with him in charge.(Please don't mention the Thomas the tank engine trophy!).

Hmm, I think I can just about cope with not winning Super League or the Challenge Cup in the next few years.