I think "blown away" is the phrase I'm looking for.
They dominated down the middle and shredded our right wing - man for man bigger, faster, stronger.
Their size advantage allowed them to push us off in the collision and they always gave second effort to make extra yards or break free. They either looked for the offload or went down on their faces to get fast PTB.
To our great credit we never gave up and the very few times we had them on the backfoot we actually looked good. Most of our players found it hard to make extra yards from the collision (except germaine who made some really great runs and perhaps Brendan). We need to generate second phase ball to open up defences and also need to learn when to go down fast to get a quick play the ball.
The players just looked overawed in the first 15 mins and showed Widnes far too much respect.
We gave away to many silly penalties and committed too many unforced errors.
Big, big learning curve.
I think we might see some big defeats this year but I also think we will produce some shocks - we need to make cougar park a fortress. I just hope that some of the fringe fans are not put off, we need support, especially at home.
