Widnes Vikings 6

Rochdale Hornets 2

WIDNES will be glad to have emerged from this game with two more points towards their main objective of winning the Northern Ford Premiership, but will have to find several extra gears when they meet superior opposition than Hornets.

Low scoring rugby league matches can often be very exciting affairs. Sadly this game was something of an exception.

Rochdale, despite a surfeit of possession, never had the imagination to break down the Vikings' defence, and for their part Widnes failed to put the Hornets' line under sustained pressure as time and again they spilled the ball.

The opening minutes saw the Vikings engineer one of the few clean breaks of the match when Paul Mansson's superb ball sent Lokeni Savelio charging up the left centre.

The powerful second-rower drew the full-back and found Damian Munro on his inside but the wingman didn't quite have the pace to make the line and lost the ball in a last-ditch cover tackle.

Any thoughts that his might be the start of a blitz of attacking play from Widnes were quickly dispelled as the Hornets gained a platform in the Vikings' '20', forcing a series of line drop-outs with some well judged kicking by the experienced half-back pairing of Deryck Fox and Willie Swann.

It took half-an-hour for the first points to be registered through the reliable boot of Mark Hewitt who chipped over an angled penalty goal after Gareth Adams was held down in the tackle to give the Vikings a 2-0 lead they would hold onto until the interval.

Within two minutes of the restart, the lead was doubled when Hewitt added another penalty as the visitors transgressed again at the play-the-ball - this time holding down Savelio.

It took the Hornets 50 minutes to break their duck when they were gifted a penalty under the posts when a line drop-out from full-back Dean Cross flew straight into touch.

At 4-2, one sensed that one try from either side would be enough to win the game but the try never came. With just two minutes remaining, Hewitt scored the game's final points with his third penalty goal to make it 6-2.

By the end, the players looked glad to get in out of the cold and much of the crowd was of the same opinion.

For the Vikings, the pick of the players were the industrious pack duo of Adams and Savelio, whilst in the backs, on a day when flowing rugby was largely out of the equation, the powerful running of centre Chris Percival caught the eye.

Sadly, in-form back-rower Jim Cassidy was carried from the field in the second-half to give coach Colin Whitfield another thing to worry about in the build up to Silk Cut Cup Quarter-Final.

As if the fact that Leeds Rhinos are the visitors is not worrying enough. It's going to be considerably hotter come Sunday.

Attendance: 2,684.

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