THE LONG WAIT to hear whether Widnes will play in Super League is soon to be over with a decision to be made this Thursday.

The RFL board are meeting this Thursday and the club, which had been hoping to hear one way or another earlier this week, will learn its fate afterwards.

Meanwhile, club chairman Tony Chambers is hoping that this weekend's game against Featherstone sees the 4,000 crowd barrier broken.

Regardless of the franchise bid's outcome, the Vikings are playing the sort of rugby that could see them win promotion on the field at the NFP's Headingley Grand Final on September 25.

After Friday's victory at Rochdale, where away fans dominated a crowd of 1,500, Tony is hoping that Rugby League lovers will get down to the Auto Quest.

"I think it's important to say that the fans that are coming are great, but we need the others," he said.

Featherstone have racked up 100 points in the last two matches, home wins against Oldham and Batley.

But Widnes will be looking for their eighth successive victory after the comfortable win at Spotland 16-38.

The early exchanges in the Hornets match suggested that the home side felt their best chance of victory was through a highly practical approach with prop-forward Sculthorpe well to the fore in that department.

His third high shot of the game saw him dismissed from the field on the half hour.

By that time, the Vikings had established a 4-12 lead through three Hewitt penalties (all for high tackles) and a converted try from Damian Munro created by a peach of a pass from Paul Mansson following a scrum.

A Swann penalty pulled two points back for Hornets before fine cross-field passing allowed Jim Cassidy to put Simon Verbickas in at the corner.

Hewitt's wonderful goal-kicking form continued as he added the extras.

Just before the interval, Hornets brought themselves back into the game when Widnes old boys Chris Kelly and Andy Eyres combined - the latter touching down in the right corner.

Swann's conversion made the Vikings half-time lead look vulnerable at 12-18.

A Phil Cantillon try two minutes into the second-half eased the nerves, the live-wire hooker sprinting in from 20 yards after good interplay between Mansson and Hewitt.

A trip by Kelly earned him 10 minutes in the bin and allowed Hewitt to stretch the lead to 12-26.

With the home side reduced to 11 men, their overworked defence was bound to crack and when Mansson ran the ball on sixth tackle they had no answer as he weaved his way in from 40 yards.

Hewitt converted before beginning the first of two spells in the bin for obstruction on Swann.

A try by Hornets' substitute Mick Coult reduced the arrears to 16-32 before Mansson produced one of his favourite party pieces - picking off a clean interception and trotting to the posts from 35 yards with Myler converting.

This was the last scoring action of the game though there was enough time for Hewitt to return to the field and almost immediately leave it again as he reacted angrily to one of the many robust challenges of Hornets' skipper David Stephenson.

The win would have been even more comfortable but the Vikings had two tries disallowed on the intervention of the touch judges who came on to report incidents that had happened so long before the ball was touched down that nobody could remember them.

If the Vikings get a win this Sunday a push towards the top of the table looks a real possibility.

Widnes: Munro (1t), Smith, Percival, Myler (1g), Verbickas (1t), Mansson (2t), Hewitt (8g), Hansen, Cantillon (1t), Argent, Mann, Hulme, Cassidy, Subs: Birdseye, Murphy, Cross, Doherty.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.