Rusty Widnes.... very very Rusty but job done and class told out in the end.

have to agree thought amor was outstanding

Leroy Joe may look like a peanut but he can still be a pain when he wants to be.

Whitehaven were tough prawns to beat out there tonight. But we just had the edge without playing well. We will have to go up a couple of gears in our next 3 games. Tough to pick our m.o.m but i'd say its out of half a dozen.

So tempting to make a crass comment there.

But i won't

you should be still praising ronnie for single handedly putting you in a final this year already!

he does like giving you lot piggybacks

according to sky he is a copper, so has probably pi$$ed off too many scousers this week already, thought he'd give you ANOTHER nite off!

Thats major sour grapage. Those sour candies you get aren't as sour as that.

just speaking gospel my friend,

remember i was unbiased last nite!

Good win seen as not played alot and these fax fans are doing my head in with some bull about ref,we lucky etc.Good teams win when not playing well.We won a cup and dont be surprised we are in grand final again.

Yup we were lucky because we didn't play well, but saying it was down to the ref is crackers. Whitehaven came with a gameplan to slow us down which inherently runs the risk of a lop sided penalty count. They would have seen that as a calculated gamble and fair play to them, it nearly worked. I say 'fair play' in the sense that they committed technical offences that they may/may not have got away with, rather than trying to knock heads off. The Ref could have given us plently more penalties due to lying on in the tackle so to say he was biased is plain daft.

Was well impressed with Leroy Joe, did very well behind a good display from their pack. We just had a bit more inventiveness to score when it mattered to win the game.

That's pretty much how I saw it... Haven repeatedly had a third man flopping late onto the tackle to slow us down and even then there was all sorts of going ons when they were supposed to be picking themselves up.

Laughton was also taking them back a good distance at the beginning but shortened the gap after about 20 minutes.. this still didn't stop the Haven players standing 2 - 3 foot in front of him.

In the end I think we should count ourselves lucky that they were quite weakened and had probably done half a days work before travelling up.
Much improvement needed from us to progress but we know it's there.

Plenty of lying on at the PTB, offside constantly which went unoticed a lot, I think Laughton gave a few 'odd' decisions, and possibly gave Widnes the rub of the green at times, however he didn't do anything to change the context of the game IMO. Haven thoroughly deserved their lead at the break and Like someone else has pointed out Leroy was pretty impressive, and controlled things but near their line we looked more dangerous than they did, and the tries we scored all looked relatively easy.

Plenty of first teamers out too, as there were for them. 2 evenly matched outfits but Widnes had a little bit more class.

As a neutral, gotta agree with Vikingsfan comments. Haven were slowing game down and eventually the ref rightly made them pay heavily for it. He could and should have been pulling Widnes for offside at most play the balls.
I think the disallowed try was a correct decision as the defence was delayed in tackling which resulted in the time needed to get the offload out.

Nobody, including SKY seems to have picked up on the incident prior to the drop goal. When Haven player was tackled just short of the line on the previous play having made the break, a supporting Haven player seemed to being pulled back. It appeared he would have been there to receive a pass and fall over the line next to the posts or at least could have resulted in Widnes going to 12 men. Check it out if youve recorded it.

Good ban or ugly, it's play off RL and we'll take whatever comes.