Also add to the fact, there were more people at the fans forum last night than there are Crusaders season ticket holders, says it all really.

Only because we lent them one way back when , I'd have let them play in ' skins '

How very homoerotic.

Move the club to France might be a good start

with the amount of times you made the trip last season, you should know Halifax like the back of your hand

I'll go as far as saying we are alot more professional than most Rugby League clubs. People complain about the club and some aspects of the way it is run but you can never win with these people. Since day one I've been impressed with Steve O'Connor. I don't know about other people but I get taken in by him when I see him on the media releases and the comments he makes in the press. He's a very passionate man about life and sport in general. Not forgetting what he brings to the table is something different in respect of his experience running a family business and then heading up a section in Stobarts. We've got all these Chairman who've came into their respective clubs as a follower of that club. SOC wasn't really an RL man, probably went the odd game when he was young, might be a blessing in disguise really as he makes decisions with the head rather than the heart.

He has been a breath of fresh for Widnes since he got involved and will be a great asset in Super League for the game as a whole. He's clearly a very succesful businessman, very astute in his selection of his staff and most of all realistic and level headed. We are very privilaged as a club to have someone such as Steve involved at Widnes and it's great that a local boy done good and is putting back something into the local community which is more that can be said of other successful businessmen.

So in short, it's not just what Widnes bring to the party it's the new ideas that our Chairman brings.



I like you. Pint of brown bitter for you squire

The only thing left for Widnes to do is to peform on the field and keep on improving everything else.

Let's hope so mate.

The bar has been raised high for next season already in these video interviews:

[urlhttp://www.runcornandwidnesweeklynews.co.uk/videos-pics/runcorn-widnes-videos/2009/12/02/widnes-vikings-fans-forum-55368-25307834/[/url





Note the club are distancing themselves of anything to do with the Celtic / Wrexham rumours and rightly so.

generally i believe that our away support is decent, i'd estimate that of home support around 15 - 25 % travel to away games.

we cerrtainly have always punched above our weight in terms of away fans

That would indicate around 1,000 but considering you took 3,000 to warrington, I think you could manage more than (1,000) that for Wigan and Saints games.

depending on when we played wigan away and how well we were doing we could take anything between 1000-2500 easily for a league game

When the decisions were announced I thought you guys were a touch unlucky not to have been in place of Salford.
I always doubted your potential to be any bigger than Cas however within the last 6-12 months almost everything coming out of Widnes seems positive. I had doubts over your youth policy but someone rightly set me straight on that, I didn't realise you were running a full setup even in the lower leagues.
You seem to have the right ideas on expansion and although Widnes itself is a fairly small town you have fingers in many pies and frankly, you'd have to.
Barring a miracle bid from somewhere else I fail to see how you'll be overlooked next time. Everything off the field seems to be perfectly in place and I don't think you could be better run.

If you're not admitted to SL in 2012 you can bring this up and I'll donate £100 to a charity of your choice. I reckon Toulouse & yourself, Salford dropped to make it 15 clubs, the magic weekend then being run as a last 16 challenge cup day.

Are you taking the pis5 or what?


We’ve run a full set up for about 8-10 years. Unlike Cas, who only run an under 18’s while in NL1.


Which is nearly twice the size of Castleford.


I think you should worry about your own club. It will be either Cas or Wakey that get the boot imo. As much as I think Salford have no business being in the top flight, it is in an important area for the development of the game, and we have too many small Yorkshire clubs in SL already.

Noo I wasn't.
You've had similar attendances previously in SL, yes you're a bigger town but its not by much (Nowhere near twice the size, look it up chief) really when comparing to the bigger areas, see below.



Not really, we're 5 times bigger than Castleford as an area and 4 times bigger than you, this is more the angle i was coming from when I said there wasn't much difference in size.
I don't really see why you took such exception to my comparison, I think you're probably misinformed by the size of the two towns.

Yes, it’s not twice the size, but Widnes is significantly bigger than Castleford.
Castleford - Population: 37,525

Widnes - Population: 53,410

That’s a difference of 15.885

What you completely fail to understand is the reality of Widnes drawing support from it’s entire borough. I wrote this earlier in the thread:




Could you please expand on that?

Because, as you have now read, we draw from a population of 114,662. There’s the fact, unlike Castleford, we have no competing clubs to the south or west. That gives us a free reign in much of Cheshire, Wirral, South Liverpool and even North Wales.

I’m sorry, but you are seriously deluded if you think you have that kind of potential. Your time spent in SL has allowed Castleford to build a good, stable fan base – good on yer. However, I would suggest you are close to saturation point for RL in your area, and only major success could improve your fan base significantly any further. If Widnes had been able to sustain their SL place, we would be miles ahead of Cas now imo. Hull KR were regarded as a small club a few years ago. Within three years, they have already left Cas behind.


It wasn’t so much the size of our respective towns that bothered me, but the use of the same old, uniformed, platitudes made about Widnes and clubs in the lower division. None of them ever hold true.

In my opinion, if Widnes get a licence in 2012, and we have even a modicum of success, we will also pull away from Cas. When the RFL then choose to drop heartland clubs again, and that will happen, Cas will be one of the first clubs to go imo.

Without a new ground, I'd stake my house on it.

First thing's first, how dare you associate me with a yorkshireman; I'm from Warrington


I agree almost completely with what you're saying, if you read my post again I said the opinion in past tense and went on to say that although Widnes itself is a small town you've got fingers in many pies.
At the moment they are fingers because as i've said on the VT someone ought to get towards chester and in the suburbs south of runcorn there's very little RL played, I have a few mates in those areas who had to travel to Widnes to play.
I have a slight objection with your statement regarding Cas as due to the size of the town they obviously draw from a bigger area, they've GOT to, no way 20% of the population turn out to watch them and so populations arent THAT important, regardless you're both significantly smaller than warrington which was the point I drew on and why I put you in a similar bracket in that respect, we obviously disagree.
IIRC they (Cas) try to draw more from the south (i think) and i genuinely feel they will get the new stadium and it will be wakey first of the two but both will be preceeded by Salfords exit imo

I did state that my old opinion was wrong and that I could see you going on to do very, very well.
(not as well as us though)

A Wire!

I might have guessed



What's the population of Warrington - 180,000?

You do know we get an awful lot of supporters from Warrington to don't you?



Penketh and Sankey are particularly fertile areas.



Cas have my upmost respect, and always have, but they are limited in a way we are not. Expansion*zis alway talk about potential and catchment areas, while completely ingoring what even some heartland clubs have. Double standards are the very nature of their arguements. Personally, I think it's all bullsh*t anyway.

AKA Little Widnes.

I prefer not to frequent those parts of town: The scouse accent gets to me like no other...

well thats funny cause iv got a warrington accent via burtonwood,and ive watched widnes for 36 years and not a hint of scouse in my accent mucker

i also live in sankey.

I can vouch for that!

Not the little corner that will forever be part of Halifax...

That said, the game on Boxing Day, are tickets available via the shop near Asda beforehand, or is it but on the day at the ground?

U can get tickets at the shop and i assume they will also be available from the club on the day....

Never!!!! Penketh always has and always will be Black and White!

You can purchase tickets from the ground at 12 onwards on match day.

Any other time just pop into the club shop next to the Asda.