94 replies to this topic

[Grebo Guru]

Sounds like a standard James Child performance to me.

[Maximus Decimus]

Sounds like a standard James Child performance to me.

It was truly a shocker. The brawl seems to be getting the headlines but it was his inability to police the ruck (mainly in the first half it must be said) that was the big concern. How the first half ended with a penalty count of 9-3 to Saints, only Childs will know. If the average tackle is 4 seconds, Saints were probably 6 seconds at times today and it wasn't down to good technique. What really took the biscuit was when he blew up for Widnes holding down for the exact same technique Saints were employing on every tackle but executed better than about 75% of them!

It was just good old fashioned holding down and there should be no place for it in RL. In results in matches that are 4-4 after 60 minutes and whilst sometimes this can be a good thing, today it wasn't.

Edited by Maximus Decimus, 10 February 2013 - 10:56 PM.

[Viking Warrior]

shall we talk about knock ons as well?? a blatant one led to the match defining try when we were down to 11, and as regards the brawl, mccarthy scarsbrook sprinted a good 20 metres to start throwing punches the brawl was started by wilkin and lafranchi throwing punches into ben cross, and yet jon clarke was the only one binned?? cross quite rightly went for a bad high tackle which was as bad as the one committed by a stains player not 2 minutes before. childs allowed saints to get away with murder all afternoon and completely lost control of the game. a draw would have been a fair result as both teams cancelled each other out and i predict that the chemics will be the surprise team of this season.........................as a side issue gaz hock was brilliant, i can't wait until he gets used to playing with the vikings.

[chuffer]

4-4 for about 60mins.......old school arm wrestle and pretty enjoyable......it looked as though it could have gone either way for most of the game......Saints didn't seem interested for the first half, it was weird - I thought they'd come out all guns blazing after last week#s drubbing but they looked unsure of themselves and lacked energy......we all thought "we can have this, they're not at the races but the brawl/sending off happened and a Saints try was always on the cards after that.

Some positives for Widnes is that we looked a lot more "together" than last season, if we can avoid injuries we'll only get better as the season goes on. We were lacking ideas on their line in first half but seemed abit more threatening in the for the first 20 in the second half....some good hands by Hock when he came on I noticed

Who was it who got cleaned out?......and was that by Wilkin or Cross?

[Saint Toppy]

From the reaction of the Saints fans and players, I suspect the Cross incident was pretty bad, I was too far away to see it. I'd like to see how he justified sin binning Clarke and nobody else. It was like I said earlier, he seemed to revel in the animosity and what better way to prove that the crowd haven't influenced your decisions by being 'brave' enough to send off 2 players from one side and none from another. The easier, more crowd appeasing decision would have been Cross off and then 1 player from each sin-binned.

Cross was sent off for the high tackle and Clarke went to the bin for mouthing off at the Ref over the sending off, not for his part in the brawl.

[Viking Warrior]

so mothing off was more of an issue than running 20 metres to land a cheap punch?? i despair of some of the referees these days!!

[Maximus Decimus]

so mothing off was more of an issue than running 20 metres to land a cheap punch?? i despair of some of the referees these days!!

Exactly, mouthing off after a brawl and reducing one team to 11 as a result is more sensible than sin-binnings for the mass brawl?

Anyway, too much is being made of this one issue, as if this is the source of the Widnes fans annoyance. I was actually at the toilet whilst the cards were dished out and came back to a resigned set of fans. It's hard to verbalise just how livid the fans were prior to this incident, for instance there was a mass-booing of Child after the first half.

The strange thing is that 4-4 in a fair game against St Helens should represent an incredible result for Widnes at half time and to 60 minutes. However, we felt hard done by. We had been given none of the calls and as a result had no field position or chance to get any momentum. The ridiculous level of holding down meant that every time we got the ball we faced a well set line of defence. To cap this off he repeatedly penalised Widnes for similar offences.

Perhaps most frustratingly and predictably he evened up the penalty count in the last 5 minutes to give it a respectable air. All penalties of course were in our own 20 mid-field so we saw no actual benefit from it.

[Saintslass]

The strange thing is that 4-4 in a fair game against St Helens should represent an incredible result for Widnes at half time and to 60 minutes. However, we felt hard done by.

Why? We only scored two more tries than you did: one when you were down to 11 men and one when Flynn dropped the ball with Lomax swooping on it, so you gave us the second try yourselves. We can't attack a fly while he's having a dump at present but our defence was 100% improved on last week. Makinson alone accounted for three try saving tackles during those last 10 minutes when you were getting your catch up penalties. Our stats in defence are incredible. Wilkin, almost 40 tackles; Hohaia over 40 tackles. Even that lazy toad Puletua managed 24 tackles (almost twice his total of the previous week). We hardly let you move. In the absence of a coherent attack we needed to provide a good defence and that is what we did.

[Vikingste]

Childs was Poor yes.....Really Poor, But I dont like to see Cheap shots on great players like Wellans...One of the Best palyers of his geberation and one of my Fav players.

Cross got what he deserved....But the Turmoil that followed was handled extremely badky by Childs....extremely badly

[hindle xiii]

I can't see a video from slhighlights for this game as yet. I'll post when it does materialise.

[Viking Warrior]

cross got a 1 game ban for an early guilty plea....

[Maximus Decimus]

Why? We only scored two more tries than you did: one when you were down to 11 men and one when Flynn dropped the ball with Lomax swooping on it, so you gave us the second try yourselves. We can't attack a fly while he's having a dump at present but our defence was 100% improved on last week. Makinson alone accounted for three try saving tackles during those last 10 minutes when you were getting your catch up penalties. Our stats in defence are incredible. Wilkin, almost 40 tackles; Hohaia over 40 tackles. Even that lazy toad Puletua managed 24 tackles (almost twice his total of the previous week). We hardly let you move. In the absence of a coherent attack we needed to provide a good defence and that is what we did.

Exactly, you hardly let us move. This wasn't necessarily down to fantastic defence, it is a fact that if you are able to set your defence up after each tackle that you will have less to face. I'd love to see the territorial stats for the game because the vast majority of Widnes ball was in our own half and slowed so much that we constantly against a well organised defence. This isn't just Widnes bias either. This is a tweet from 'The Saint' on Twitter,

"Widnes got stuck in, too much in the case of Wello's head! And Saints lying on tactics infuriated everybody in the ground apart from Nathan Brown it seems."

This is my main problem with it, I understand the difficulty referees have in trying to make split decisions but continual, constant lying on isn't a split decision. This was at its peak whilst Widnes were given 7 penalties against on the run for a multitude of things, which inevitably riled fans up. I personally think Child had backed himself into a corner with the lying on and was refusing to accept that he was wrong.

The dishonest part was the obvious levelling up of the penalty count at the end. There is no need for this but it was obvious. Widnes were shattered but for some reason Saints suddenly decided to start fouling in the last 5 minutes?

[Johnny Rocco]

Cross was sent off for the high tackle and Clarke went to the bin for mouthing off at the Ref over the sending off, not for his part in the brawl.

If your going to write stuff as if you know it to be true, you should at least check the facts first. Jon Clarke was sin binned for fighting.

[hindle xiii]

http://www.youtube.c...CtjPf2A&index=1

[bobbruce]

Not sure if I'm seeing something different to Widnes fans but the only person I see fighting in that clip is Clark. Everyone else from both teams seem to be going in there to split it up.