As far as mistakes were concerned apart from the odd “free play” incident that went in our favour I didn’t see anything that bad. The laying on at the PTB and the lack of anything like 10m at times was still as infuriating and led to a poor spectacle.

Mind you with a quicker PTB and decent 10 we’d probably have been thrashed!

I remember him waving six to go and then the turnover on the next tackle, what made it seem logical was that the ball had been bouncing around loose just before, though, to be honest, I didn't see a Widnes player touch the ball but I thought Hicks must have done. Hicks' signals are ropey at the best of times though and I agree with Bullseye about the laying on and 'shallow' ten. Apparently, according to friends who see more than I do [at present!], refereeing in the championship is not as good as in SL..

................Pope is Catholic, bears poo in the woods.

Thought the 10 was mostly fine - only recall one occasion when Widnes seemed massively offside. I agree with the lying on, but IMHO that's RL referees instructions not Hicks personally; Widnes are by no means the worst offenders in the league at this (though Betts has got them pretty good, you can see the technique, an extra man always comes in if he possibly can without being a flop; there are 2 players lying on top of each other; they always pause at least a second before anyone makes a move: the top player then looks around, and levers himself up with hands pressing his colleague down; the last player then finally moves).

It does spoil the game. But any team that persists in this tactic from the outset seems to be largely allowed to set its own benchmark and get away with it. I see it all the time in TV games. Personally I think it's part of the unspoken edict to "keep games flowing" and cut down on penalties for non-foul play. Ironically it does anything but keep the game flowing. But most teams do it, and as I say, Widnes are by no means the worst.

Why don't we do it though? It might have served us well in the second half, and slowed them down a bit and let our defense organise. We seem obsessed with being ultra fair and jumping off the tackle, even if our opponents are doing a Widnes, or is that just me?

The one message I still remember from my old coaches was "play to the whistle" as no points are awarded for occupying the moral highground

This. A keen defence sprinting forward at the instant of the PTB can look well offside, but viewed in slo-mo, really isn't.

There were at least half a dozen times when the Widnes line was a yard or two offside but this was down to line speed rather than not retreating in the first place.

Much improved fitness required for next year. We might be alright in games versus most of the Championship sides but the rest of the top 3 and the bottom 4 of SL will be a different proposition. I wonder if Lowes will bring in more staff to help with conditioning? Langley was rumoured to be coming back a while ago but I’ve not idea if he’s qualified to do that.

He and Wayne Godwin have / had a personal trainer business together. I don't know how actually qualified he is but I bet he's paper qualified.

Defenders are not supposed to move before the PTB is taken, so our 'slow' PTB makes no difference to the ruling, other than allowing our opponents more time to 'get ready' to run.. Though I accept that, since the ball rarely touches a foot, it is a moot point [iexactly[/i when the PTB takes place.

We made such a hash of some of ours that it looked like we were playing it when in fact we were just putting the ball on the ground in the most uncoordinated way possible. Thus when we actually did play the ball the Widnes defence was about 5 metres away. Obviously the ref should have blown up but he was obviously interested in something else that was going on.

On our conditioning it was obvious that our frontrowers (Sidlow, Manoakafoa and Fakir) were lacking fitness. Their running was slow and lateral in many cases and lacked any decent footwork. Offloads weren’t very common and often when they did come were very risky. Getting an offload again is a lot down to strength and fitness to be able to dominate the collision, shake off the tackler and get the arms free. It’s not something we’ve been good at since our pack started to decrease in size.

Anyway on Mr Hicks I’ve seen far worse refs and far better. He wasn’t all that bad apart from my PTB bugbear but he’s not alone there are we hardly help ourselves in this situation.

Agree with the last bit especially.

What was the old saying? "the lord helps he who helps himself", iirc, and we didn't. Widnes took what Hicks was prepared to give, whilst at times, we seemed to be jumping off as though it was Silverwood there with a stopwatch and we were playing St Helens.

Hicks was letting lying on go, he didn't police the offside at the ptb either but we didn't take what was on offer - well not until very late in the game and I suspect that was just us getting tired, if I'm honest.

The other thing is, IF a ref really is failing to police the 10, letting lying on go etc., then this still has NO effect on the ability of either team to beat each other, because it's the old "same for both sides" story.

If you accept that a ref is as palpably blind to (say) holding down as some claim, then this should be obvious at least equally to all players as it is to these fans, so unless they are all stupid and their coach blind, they could and should get away with just the same.

But then many rabid supporters would just change tack to conspiracism, i.e. "yes, but he was only not watching one side"

Widnes found it easier against our offside players than we did against theres ☺