Well played for last nite.

top class team performance,

team spirit is there for all to see,

Azza will be top class signing for you guys,

again brill opening game...

When squad was announced I said I was still not sure about Betts as a coach.

Even though "I" may have doubts, the players obviously do not.

Last night proved beyond doubt that the players are definitely, definitely playing for Betts.

The belief, guts and team spirit showed last night, was exceptional.

Well played all.

Having slept on it I am a little disappointed,we could have been done out of the full two points.Yes I know it is a big relief to salvage something after what happened and people say the sending off lifted the team and gave us spirit but who can say for sure? Yes we weren't playing well at 0-10 but who is to say we wouldn't have woken up and gone on to win comfortably with 13 players ?

Well done to the team on a fantastic effort but once again everyone is talking about the reff

That was a real gutsy performance from the lads to show such determination and fight with a man down. Instead of being stretched as I feared in the 2nd half (apart from their last try), I thought we looked like the team with an extra man. You could sense the belief from all the players that they were going to have a go and get something. A hard won but fantastic point gained. The atmosphere inside the ground was great in front of a bumper crowd. Many there for the first time, and hopefully will be keen to come back for more.

Please, please can we have him back??

and well done, should have been a penalty try at the end!! Childs is a t@sser!

Thanks but it could not be a penalty try as it was not the player scoring that was fouled & attacked by the Wigan players (Smith & Tomkins). However Smith should have been sent off for kicking Hanbury for simply celebrating the score next to him, and Tomkins should have been sent off for chasing Hanbury as he walked away after being kicked but then stopping and charging and tackling / attacking Gerrard (who had gone up to Smith not touching Smith just asking what the hell he was playing at kicking Hanbury, oh at which point Smith pushed Gerrard which is not allowed) in the in goal area and off the ball so has to be red or sin-bin?



Yet all he did was tell them off. Surely Widnes should have been given a penalty on half way as they had been attacked but no Wigan are allowed to kick the ball to us and we are pinned in our 20 metre area.



Smith must have been having a pop at the TJ whilst the kick was being taken and so got sin-binned for that, however a couple of years ago Hock did a similar thing with an in goal judge and was red carded for moaning about the decision and IIRC received a couple of match bans for it.



I agree wholeheartedly with the T@sser comment!

I thought Widnes showed a great deal of mental strength to deal with the adversity that was thrown at them. Shape and structure goes out the window when you lose your stand off and winger. Interestingly, I've read 2 or 3 comments on this site this morning saying 'on that performance Widnes won't make the 8'. I assume they also mean Wigan won't if we're handing out league positions after 1 game?!

It is strange that we seem to have a collective will in the team that enables us to play better with 12 men than we were with 13! Didn't we do the same against Bradford in 2013 when Hock was sent off and we rallied for a well earned draw. Perhaps we just throw caution to the wind in both defence and attack, or there is a collective sense of injustice that corresponds with the opposition thinking that this is now a shoe in, so they don't really have to try!

It was a great collective effort, but as others have said it allowed several players to really shine. Heremaia seemed to grow in confidence as the game wore on after an OK start. Mellor really took hold of things in Brown's absence and his kicking game was as good as we have seen in quite a while.



Everyone earned their "spurs" to be fair, although I have to say I'm not a fan of Isa's "no look" passes, especially at 90 miles an hour!



Our new boys acquitted themselves well, Heremaia already mentioned and Manuokafoa made decent yards and I noticed that several times a he was going down in the tackle his ball carrying arm was free and available to offload if anyone had been backing up. Something that we have surely got to work on, but perhaps last night wasn't the night! Clarkson too had a solid if unspectacular game (very much in the mould of the man he replaced, Galea).



One of the biggest surprises was that Marsh was caught from a scrum breakaway (is that the first time in 3 seasons that move has come off?) I think it was Gelling that overhauled him, which surprised me as I hadn't credited him with that much pace, but then he (Gelling) was a handful all night.



Sadly before all the drama, the combination of Wigan playing to the referee in terms of breaking from the 10 early and our rather pedestrian ball movement meant we didn't make much headway. I still feel our single forward drives are meat and drink to a side like Wigan who know that they only have to wait for the forward running it in, as the ball wont move beyond him, so they can concentrate their defenders. We played with greater fluency with a man short, perhaps realising that we had to make greater headway. It may well have been that we were very much finding our feet in our first competitive match and I dont want to take anything away from such a great performance in a game at 16 nil down with a player sent off and our inspirational captain "retired hurt" that could easily have been a 30 or 40 point trouncing!

Hi WV, it was Burgess who chased down Marsh, he made the break from our 20 mtrs line and got caught on their 20 IIRC, and both started level so considering it always slows you a little carrying the ball it was always likely he would be caught from such a distance out. If the scrum had been 20 / 30 metres further down field he probably scores. Burgess as we know is no slouch!

Can't be too harsh on Marsh for that, however the shocking attempted tackle on Tompkins when he scored well I think we all saw what Marsh thought of that last night!

Joe Mellor and Aaron Heremaia were outstanding, just had to say that first up, the togetherness and work ethic amongst the group is our strongest point imo. A deserved draw and still plenty more to come.



Regards Wigan im not overly convinced by them, relatively poor pre season and they just look a little short, not replacing Blake Green with a quality 6 could cost them.

We have only won 4 opening day games in the last 14 seasons, I'm sure we'll come good at some point.



Congratulations on your performance.



But how much you Widnes fans moan about referees after almost every game is laughable. Best one was your player knocking on whilst tackling Smith, and then when we get the scrum your fans shout 'you don't know what you're doing'





Overall we got more decisions our way than you so it really was a massive effort for your lads to get the draw. However, we also got a couple of stupid decisions against us (Gelling getting penalised for knock on when he was pushed at play the ball, we were only 1 metre out at the time).



Again, congratulations, you deserved the two points on the night.



My only complaint with the comments on this thread are talking aboiut our 'thuggish' tactics. Other than the Smith/Tomkins silly incident at the end, I don't think we were any less/more thuggish than your lads. I mean Ah Van got sent off for an accidental/clumsy attack to Charnley's head. And the scuffle in the middle was started by O'Carroll when Mellor fell over whilst chasing one of his own kicks.

They were saying in the Sky summary, that the RFL should change the rules so that a person can be penalised even if the ball is out of play, becuse Widnes should have had a penalty after the kick by Smith after the last try last night, and as the rule stands a player can take someone out if the ball is out of play and not get penalised for it, which isn't fair.