Yes 44-28 looks decent enough but some of the defence was horrendous, tyrer and ropati were awful tonight. Heckenberg deserves a medal for the work he got through and macgraff was again busy. Ford must replace tyrer with tangi getting the benefit of the doubt in the other spot. A dual reg scrum half with a good kicking game wouldn't go a miss either.

Oh and were was pickersgill, finnigan and ford? Are they just rotating or are they injured?

Ive added my intial piece on the end of the score thread.

Relieved to get away with the win because we where struggling for large parts of that.

Centres has definitely jumped to the top of the problems list now. Still time for it all to come together over the coming weeks but some of Tangi's air shots tonight where laughable.

Not really a night for good performances. Craven spent more time on his backside getting skinned and for me the most comfortable performance of the back 5 came from Gardner which probably sums the performance up.

Forwards faired slightly better. Hecky ran well as did Varks. Frodsham at least got some game time under his belt and I do like Kurt Haggerty if we could find him a position whilst we toughened up when Dave Allen finally got back on the pitch for a sustained period after they sorted his bleed out.

We got throught it though which is what matters and hopefully roll onto a better run out against Rochdale.

Lets hope it was one of those days.

Potentially I do think Coyle can do a solid job at scrum half for the time being but you cant use him then as the interchange with Netherton and push Gerrard into the halves. Id rather push Gore through with more appearances off the bench than use a dual regger. We could throw as much as weve got left on the salary cap at Nathan Wynn though alternatively and buy ourselves a kicking game for the first time in years. Toulouse have picked up what looks like another two exciting halves up from Australia with good kicking games yet we struggle along with the same old problem and an unsued quota place.

how were TO13 generally ? any positives from them ?

Yes, worth at prop continues to be a handful and your half backs went well. Your kicking game was also impressive but fitness may be a concern as they tired shockingly towards the last 10 minutes.

yes,big Brendan is a cracking prop and I reckon will be a contender for the Man of Steel this season

Not on form but neither will any team be at this stage, I am grateful for the win, the way they were breaking through our line on a couple of occasions I thought we were in for a pasting, but good win in the end, kept there heads up and pressed on, not only the players are a bit rusty though, the comentator forgot to take his half time celebration shout out/birthday list onto the pitch, the intercom went off with an anouncement just as we were kicking for goal, which with my rose coloured glasses on would have gone over instead of hitting the upright, and on another occasion as we were setting up for a goal kick, the caterers/bar person was wheeling a bin/trolley beind. All round need to be more focused, if we had lost it would sound like sour grapes/moaning but although nit picking both incidents could have cost us.

we played very well in desperation but on the whole we need to improve has for the centres if ford does come back in its for ropati not tyrer everytime tyrer tuck the ball in he got a quick play the ball and got are sets off to a flyer he also had a great finish for his try and put to people into touch 1 each half ropati just misses way to many tackles n puts paddy under extra pressure down that right side but still early days....heckenburg was auwsome for me great go forward

Defence needs improving all over the park, not just in the centres.. They scored easy tries on the left side, on the right side and the middle side as well as a telegraphed interception... Team work is the key to defence, and i was hoping dennis would have addressed that as defence was our weak suit last season... Obviously there's time to improve but it would have been nice to have a better starting point..

Hecks needs some help from a new seasoned prop and quickly up front.. Frodsham is slow and cumbersome.. Not upto standard for NL1 ATM for me.. Varks was ok.. But without Picks n G Haggerty we are light upfront..

Overall it was good to see us get of to winning start and my gut feeling is this squad is no better overall than last year... 4th or 5th place finish i recon....

The thing that concerns me most is - If we cant recruit a team to challenge the top 2 or 3 in NL1... IF we get to SL how the hell will we recruit a team to challenge the lower/mid table teams...

Neil

Betts: "We had a few late changes. Finnigan has been in hospital with his appendix and Pickersgill had to pull out, so we had to juggle."...

Tyrer spent too much time moaning, with his winger Gardner and needs to concentrate on his own game.He will come better, as did some good things and bad.Defence can be improved in training.Grant Gore should play scrumhalf and Coyle an interchange hooker with Netherton.Hecky i thought made alot of yards, and is an asset.I am not worried about our forwards as Frodsham just needs match fitness like Hecky needed last season.We also have Danny Sculthorpe,Gaz Haggerty,Finnigan,Houghton and Pickers to come back playing.I,Anson will also be back playing in a few weeks time.Be patient as we have a better balanced squad this year.

They will consider themselves unlucky to have lost, having dominated for much of the game. Final score flatters Widnes.

Lewis & Nicholls were superb and Widnes struggled to cope with Worth whenever he was on the pitch. In general, they looked very good when they had the ball, not so good in defence. Even when Widnes were struggling a bit, team was still able to go 50+ metres in our six tackles. Toulouse kicking game was excellent - several chips over the top of defence, couple of which came off, a 40-20..
Good discipline from both teams - don't have the stats, but very few penalties. Plenty of errors though.

Nes Frodsham was slow but do you remember everyone slagging Heckenberg in his first few games?
He is a big lad and with match fitness will become good.Do not forget we have Pickers,Houghton,Gaz Haggerty, and Danny Sculthorpe who can play prop. Fax started badly in the Northern Rail cup and became Champions.Toulouse have some good players and will be in the top 8, so not a bad result after all.

I agree and thought their halfbacks where dangerous.Coyle is not a scrumhalf and Gore needs to take his postion in the next game.Thackeray is a running player, and needs a playmaker as his scrumhalf, with a kicking game.

that was frodshams first game for along time he will get better and stronger and fitter.and gardner and tyrer looked like they had a dissagreement over somthing in the 1st half but in the second half they seemed fine i was sat in the south stand and they were talking and shaking hands all frew the game when things went well.emotions run high in tigh games like that