Sat 20th-Sun 21st Jul: The Betfred Championship Match Thread

[Phil]

1 hour ago, The Blues Ox said:

Oh I don't really blame Finn, this is still basically Simon Grix's team and along with the forced signing of Widdop, Finn has not really had a fair shot. Grix's mistake was not freshening up our squad each season and as we saw last season a lot of the players really needed moving on but instead he got rid of some players that were good and kept players who have been bang average.

How on earth was Widdop’s signing “forced”? he’s two or three steps ahead of every other player in the squad and I’m pretty sure he’s massively frustrated that no one’s running of him 

[LeeF]

1 hour ago, wasginger said:

With the refs arm signal, it looks to me as though he's given the penalty for a voluntary tackle. Deliberately falling to the ground. I could be wrong but that's mt take. Unbelievable.

That’s not the signal for a voluntary tackle. He is signalling a pull of some sort

[LeeF]

1 hour ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

The penalty was given at the point of the incident, there are two Widnes players at the scene, one of them is being dragged (illegally) into touch, the other one only gets close enough to collect the pass. Widnes players were not pulling anyone anywhere near that position.

Nothing illegal about being tackled into touch. Arm carrying the ball never touches the ground. The defenders keep the ball carrier away from the ground. 

[Jill Halfpenny fan]

26 minutes ago, LeeF said:

Nothing illegal about being tackled into touch. Arm carrying the ball never touches the ground. The defenders keep the ball carrier away from the ground. 

Disregarding technicalities of dragging a man into touch, you believe the ball carrying arm did not not touch the floor, hence the tackle is not complete, hence the ball can be passed. It is blatantly obvious no Widnes player pushed an opponent so why was the penalty given against Widnes?

[LeeF]

9 hours ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

Disregarding technicalities of dragging a man into touch, you believe the ball carrying arm did not not touch the floor, hence the tackle is not complete, hence the ball can be passed. It is blatantly obvious no Widnes player pushed an opponent so why was the penalty given against Widnes?

Clearly the referee thought he saw a pull. He was in a different position to you, I or the camera.
The original question was what was the penalty for.
Whether it was correct is a completely different question but the video above isn’t the best to reach a definite conclusion from 

[The Blues Ox]

11 hours ago, Phil said:

How on earth was Widdop’s signing “forced”? he’s two or three steps ahead of every other player in the squad and I’m pretty sure he’s massively frustrated that no one’s running of him 

Finn was told Widdop was signing for us,he did not have a choice. I think that could be classed as forced and I am sure given the choice and around 60k to play with Finn would not have used that money to sign another half back when our spine was the best part of our team. Ive no doubt that he is still a good player but in the context of the areas of the team we needed to improve, he has been a waste of money.

[Phil]

5 hours ago, The Blues Ox said:

Finn was told Widdop was signing for us,he did not have a choice. I think that could be classed as forced and I am sure given the choice and around 60k to play with Finn would not have used that money to sign another half back when our spine was the best part of our team. Ive no doubt that he is still a good player but in the context of the areas of the team we needed to improve, he has been a waste of money.

Widdops wages aren’t paid by the club by the way, they’re paid by a group of sponsors 

Edited July 23 by Phil

[Griff]

42 minutes ago, Phil said:

Widdops wages aren’t paid by the club by type way, they’re paid by a group of sponsors 

Whose decision was it to sign him?

[Phil]

2 hours ago, Griff said:

Whose decision was it to sign him?

I haven’t a clue 

[The Blues Ox]

4 hours ago, Phil said:

Widdops wages aren’t paid by the club by type way, they’re paid by a group of sponsors 

Half and half. Approx 30k would still be enough to bring in a couple of very good forwards at this level. Its catch 22 really as I have no doubt that Widdop would look a lot better than he has done if he were playing behind a semi decent pack, the irony been that money spent on him has contributed to that not happening, that and our Football Director managing to increase our wage budget by over 100K while putting out a worse team than last season probably didn't help either.