To be fair to us though it was our first hit out. It was a third for Widnes.

One thing that was glaringly obvious though was the lack of James Graham in our side, and I don't just mean the ginger hair either! I think we are going to miss him in a way that we didn't miss Cunningham last season.

Did the roof stay on?

I agree. When Cunningham left, it wasn't too much of a problem, as one of the world's best hookers was replaced by another of the world's best in James Roby. It's a different story at prop however; your strength in depth in the front row is the weakest in the top 6 IMO.

However, I still think you'll do well this season, there's real quality in the backs especially.

What was the crowd?

It was a sell out of 11,000+ (capacity was reduced due to the recent storm damage)

nothing to do with the storm damage I don't think, it was always a requirement to have a reduced capacity match to get full safety certificate

But it goes up to full capacity for superleague?

Att: 11,924

Ah, forgot about that. Safety certificates are granted in stages, it happened at LSV and at Salford too.

Strange that Salfords capacity was reduced to such a small figure though

Yup, 18,000 will be the capacity for the Salford game.

The club had to have two test events to get the full safety certificates. The first was a live training session with a couple of thousand attending, which included ticket entry and a test evacuation. The second was the game last night with a reduced capacity. All went well from a safety perspective, no obvious overfilling of the terraced areas, which was a problem when Warrington opened their ground.

They had to do a lot more than that! For instance, a week ago they had kids from the local amateur clubs using the turnstiles so the system could be tested. They had to make sure the turnstiles were used 5000 times in one session! (The youngsters were given a full guided tour of the stadium as a thank you) The club have had to do lots of other things as well towards the safety certificate. Last night was simply the final and biggest step of them all. If that exercise passed the test then we're in.

And if not ?