The Lucky Black Cat wrote:Widnes threw the game away after being 0-10 up and having the momentum. Poor discipline (Dropped Ball & silly penalties) meant you gave Leigh possession and chances to get back in. Poor defending allowed Leigh to capitalize on these chances. Widnes lack Team Spirit and charactor and have no leader to take the game by the scruff of the neck. Smith and Webster were good in the first 30-then disappeared.
Passing the ball well from one side of the pitch to the other is good but often pointless if you are not making good yards- that was Widnes often yesterday. Cullen is not the man for you. You may not have a couple of decent props but you still should have a team playing better than they are!
Have Widnes improved under Cullen? NO! Do Widnes play as a team? NO! Do Widnes play on their strengths? NO! Does there look like much team Spirit at Widnes and players playing for each other? NO Most of the reasons why NO is there is down to Cullen whether you like it or not. Signing a couple of players is not the anser to your problems. You need a coach who will get your players playing as one and who will give 100%. You need a Coach who will get your players cutting out the basics they are doing wrong and get them playing using a simple gameplan that is effective. The games on SKY I have seen Widnes do not seem to have much of a game plan as your backs seem to do more drives than your forwards!! Best of luck in sorting your problems out but feel under Cullen you will struggle.
What exactly our are strengths that we should be playing to? And as for the reasons being all down to Cullen why did they exist before he arrived?
The game at Barrow away showed that Stanny would have faced exactly these same problems?
Having watched the team all season and not just the televised games I will say that I think we have improved in some areas. We now look like we can get over the whitewash during a game.
Webster and Varkulis are two players whose game is improving week on week.
We are now throwing the ball around quite nicely at times and quite often like the first try last night it does have a purpose.
We were very broken and we are slowly being fixed...
If you ask the players then Cullen is well liked and a change of the training schedule is being put in place that will see us meet up as a squad for more than twice a week. (something put in place by McCormack)
Our injuries have hit us hard this year.. Fletcher is a big miss and Morrison is a massive miss. both impact players that have a great say in our defence too. Gaskell's injury is a big loss to us too and other players are trying desperately to get their match fitness.
There is unfortunately a lot of work to be done but we are getting better and a few signings will make us more competitive again.