A poor performance, especially considering Widnes were down to 12 men, lost Kevin Brown and Danny Tickle. Some positives to take from the first half include the link up play between the half backs and our forwards, particularly Bateman. Logan Tomkins looked solid and Sutton put himself about.

We lost the intensity in the second half. The tries conceded were soft. Gelling and Bowen both should have done better in their respective defensive roles. Dropping the ball cold and giving away penalties is forgivable early in the season but our lack of direction in attack, especially with a man extra and some very fortunate penalties is disappointing.

We need to calm down as well. Too many scuffles and Joel's attack on Phelps was just bloody stupid. Teams will wind Wigan up this season after the Flower saga and if we carry on reacting we'll have more red cards than we'll care to count.

Fair play to Widnes though, performed exceptionally throughout, never gave up and Joe Mellor deserved MOTM. Wigan made it their aim to smash him at every opportunity to make him cower. He didn't. Fair play.

All we can say is we didn't lose and next week is an opportunity to improve.

Amen to your whole post especially the bit in bold. If we don't improve next week Huddersfield will murder us.

Bored of Farrell now. You can see it a mile off. He is in danger of becoming a very expensive liability in relation to our salary cap.

Farrell lost us the game with his stupid play but our halves should have won it and totally failed to control the game.

Only positive for me was Bateman who I thought was brilliant and Tautai.

Well done Widnes, Wigan will improve (their discipline needs to), but were lucky the ref left his contacts, judgement and stones tucked into his kit bag. Still the season is up and running

Fantastic fightback by Widnes who deserved two points not one. Smith should have got a straight red and Tomkins sin binned....

Agree with your whole post especially this bit. We could've had at least 1, maybe 2 more tries if Burgess could've caught a pass in the first half (and if Hicks hadn't discovered contact lenses in the off season and seen that forward pass...) but that wasn't why we drew the game. Bad discipline, no intensity and a poor kicking game in the second half - did we even finish a set inside their 20m? It just turned into a boring arm wrestle.

A game we lost last season, so we're a point up on that.
Next week is also a game we lost last season so thats the challenge.

We'll get better.

Agree, Burgess catches those balls and its game over.
It was disapointing that at no point in the last ten minutes did we get into a position to go for the one point and kill the game.

Bateman looked very good for you. Some great footwork for a lad that big!

More of us need your optimism Matty



Also I will need to watch the game again but I don't think the L.Tomkins/Powell interchange strategy worked at all. LT is so slow coming out of dummy half for such a small guy but Powell didn't have any impact.

I'm not worried for the future, there's clearly quality in the side and lots of potential to do well.

But our attitude and discipline were dreadful in the second half. The Smith and Tomkins reactions at the end were embarrassing.