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.