Widnes Weekly Times

As the new super league season draws ever nearer , the vikings will be looking to build on their progress made by last season in which the club made it into the play offs for the first time in their super league history before evntually losing out to Warrington 22-19 back on that forgettable day in August.The Vikings were somewhat the suprise package of last season despite being red hot favourites to be lingering round the bottom of the table , however it couldnt have being more diufferent as the vikings progressed steadily up the Super League table and were even making a habit of upsetting the big guns, including beating the likes of Warrington Wolves at home 28-14 and S.t Helens at home 40-26 against all the odds , and add to that not just beat-ing their rivals but outplaying them throughout the entire game and winning convincingly.

The Vikings excellent progress wasnt just evident in the league either as they also shone threw in the challenge cut beating the likes of Halifax, Salford Red Devils , and the Keighly Cougars making it all the way threw to the semi finals before disapointing-ly losing out to the Castleford Tigers 28-6 in which was a somwhat downbeat display given the Vikings previous good form going into the game.The signs of improvement havent just been last sea-son, they have been steadily on the rise since Widnes Return to Super League back in 2012 where in their first season back in the super league the club finished a miserable bottom gaining only 12 points looking very much out of place in rugbys big league conced-ing a whopping total of 1082 points, the worst in the division. along the way suffering heavy and embar-assing stand out defeats to the likes of Huddersfield Giants (66-6) Warrington Wolves ( 68-4) and the Leeds Rhinos (68-24)However things slowly but surely improved for the Vikings and in the following 2013 season Widnes started to gather some momentum and climbed up the table finishing a respectable 10th place, with their preformances improving rapidly game by game and on their way claimed some memorable victories including doing the double over the arch enemy Warringtion, which will live long in the memory of vikings fans as Widnes dominated the game from 1st miniute to last. a stunning away victory at local rivals St Helens then came in March 2013 where widnes outplayed them yet again from 1st minute to last winning 35-28, and to top it all off they added an ex-cellent victory against Hull FC 36-16 at the Stobart stadium, things were certainly looking on the and it was sign of things to come.

Going into the new 2015 season the Vikings faith-ful will be Hoping for more of the same! with the target in sight being enterting the play offs again but this time progressing thre even further to a possible

grand final.

Things howvever couldn’t get much tougher for the start of the season as Widnes host Wigan Warriors at the Stobart Stadium in the first game of the new season on Thursday 5th February 2015. Despite go-ing into the game as underdogs Widnes surprisingly have a fairly good home record against the Warri-ors, winning two out of the last three encounters at the Stobart Stadium. This game will be a test of the Vikings character and winning will ensure their progress is continuing.

For Viking supporters the key dates to look out for are the all important derby against Warrington Wolves on Thursday 2nd April at home and Sunday 3rd May at the Halliwelll Jones Stadium and the clashes against St Helens take place on Friday 13th March at home and Friday 24th away at the Saints.

Leading the Vikings out into the new 2015 will be new captain Kevin Brown who replaces former skipper Jon Clarke, who retired at the end of last season. Brown’s excellent per-formances for Widnes last season also led to him being named in the 2014 Super League Dream Team. Brown spoke out on his captaincy to BBC sport saying“ I try to lead by exam-ple and be one of those leadership players, I think we have got quite a few in the squad at the minute with Danny Tickle, Rhys Hanbury, Hep Cahill, so theres quite a few of us in here

at the moment.” I was captain at huddersfield a few years ago and i en-joyed that, ive been lucky enough to be under a few good captains, none more so than clarkey, so hopefully i do a good job of taking over the armband.”Head coach Dennis Betts has added only just 3 new faces to the squad so far ahead of the new campaign with the likes of Aaron Heremaia, Chris Clarkson and Man-uokafoa all joining up ahead of the new season, Skipper Brown spoke out on

his new signings. “ We have not had a massive amount of turnover which i guess is a bit boring for the fans but for the players its busi-ness as usual, the continuity we have from day 1 with just having 3 quality additions instead of 6 or 7 you can hit the ground running and start off where we left off.“ You get used to each other and i feel thats what we have right from the off.”Fans will be looking forward to seeing the new signings but especially Aaron Heremaia who spoke

We take a look at theVikings more in depth as the 2015 super League season draws ever nearer

Vikings ready to rumble ahead of the new season starting with the all important festive clash against the arch enemy Warrington

of his delight for join-ing the Vikings to Sky Sports. he said“ Its going to be a mssive year for me personally and i cant wait to join the vikings , this is a great oppor-tunity nd i cant wait to get started with the team.”“ I consider myself a late bloomer and ive put a lot of hard work in to join Widnes, ive repersented my coun-try and have played in an NRL grand final, the next chapter is to bring success for the Widnes Vikings and ill be giving it my all.”

Coach Betts was de-lighted to get him on board, speaking to Sky sports News saying “ This signing just shows that we are always in for signing quality players, Aaron has been outstanding for Hull hes got grwat international pedigree and has great charac-ter.”“ Anyone you speak to about Aaron speaks very highly about him, hr will ne great for the club and in the com-munity, he ticks every box Other signing Chirs Clarkson has joined

on loan from leeds Rhinos , he had been a first team regular for the Rhinos since making his debut back in 2010, howee-ver towards the latter end of the season he made just 1 substitue appearance and didnt even make the challenge cup Final Squad. Despite not featuring much over the past few months his previous experi-ence of playing on a weekly basis for one of the leagues finest teams can surely only benefit the vikings ahead of the coming

Former Bradford Bulls star Manase Manuokafoa will also be joining up with his new team mates in 2015 after signing a 2 year contract with the club back in Late July. Betts was delighted to get him on board “ What we have been lacking is someone who can add a bit more size and pres-ence, hopefully Nas can bring us that.”Manuokafao was indeed too delighted to be joining the Vi-kings, he said “ Ive

We take a look at theVikings more in depth as the 2015 super League season draws ever nearer

had three good years at Bradford with some good memories but its time to move on.”ive made some bril-lian friends there and the fans have been brilliant with me but its a new chapter for my life at widnes”All three signings will be hoping to make their debuts in the seasonal traditional destive clash against the wolves on De-cember 28th at the Haliwell jones stadi-um where has ever the atmosphere is

expected to be elec-tric, however with a little under 2 months to go before the big kick off Widnes will still be hoping to add to their ranks with rumours persisting the club are after a new Winger and a Forward. and even a whisper of James Roby name has been mentioned.. You can almost feel the excitement back for the return of Super league and if last season was anything to go by us Vikings faithful will surely be in for a treat

Vikings ready to rumble ahead of the new season starting with the all important festive clash against the arch enemy Warrington

Widnes have being found guilty of serious breaches of rugby league football rules and have being hit with a heavy fine after unsavoury scenesWidnes Vikings have been found guilty of serious breaches of Rugby Football League rules by an independ-ent tribunal and being fined up to £20,000 following a pitch inva-sion which took place after the Vikings were eliminated from the challenge cup by Cas-tleford Tigers in the semi final clash back in August.A statement on the RFLs website read that Widnes must pay £10,000 immediate-ly with a additional £10,000 fine suspend-ed until the end of 2015 campaign, with the club also ordered to pay £4000 in dam-age costd.The fines are due to the large crowd dis-turbances at the end of the game in which hundreds of Vikings supporters made their way onto the pitch causing mayhem, pro-voking castleford

a fine at the end of the day isn’t that bad we could have been boot-ed out of next year’s competition”.Mother of two, Rachel, aged 35 spoke out “those people were an absolute disgrace, they give our town and our club a bad name. I’ve been supporting the club since I was little and my whole family support them, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”However Mike, aged 22, had a conflicting view from the others “I don’t feel the club should have been fined that much. It was just a small minority of idiots who give the club a bad name, you shouldnt punish a club just because of a few hooligans.”

Widnes Vikings Fined 20,000 after pitch Invasion

with the majority agreeing with the pun-ishment, . Life long Vikings fan Joshua, Cosgrove aged 21, said, “We should just accept this pun-ishment and move on. We are lucky we didn’t get banned from the Challenge Cup com-pletely. The scenes at the end were horri-ble and upsetting. It wasn’t just your hoo-ligan causing trouble, it was whole families, mothers and daughters were on the pitch too.” Joshua wasn’t alone in his feelings towards the punishment as another young fan James, aged 21, felt the punishment was considerably light, “ It could have con-siderably worse given what happened,

supporters, fight-ing with, police and stewards, and dam-aging the pitch, not only were these pitch invaders just men the more disturbing factor was there were even groups of family caus-ing mischief making their way onto the pitch this all inevita-bly led to hundreds of arrests and charges being made to the hooligans banning

them from attending any games for the fol-lowing 2015 season.A statement on the RFLs website was relased follwing the charges and it read,“The tribunal ack-knowledged Widnes vikings full co- oper-ation with the RFLs investigation but felt the punishment given reflected the seriousness of the incident.

However despite all the criticism aimed at the fans, it must be stressed it wasnt every Widnes sup-porters who caused the mayhem, with many showing their anger and disbelief at the people who were causing the trouble at the semi final. I ques-tioned many Widnes fans about the inci-dent and they gave me their thoughts.