Warrington 22-6 Widnes: Wolves too strong for Vikings

Match stats: Warrington 22-6 Widnes

Warrington tries: Russell (2,63), Hiku (52), Brown (59)
Goals: Ratchford (52, 59, 63) 

Widnes tries: Mellor (16)
Goals: Marsh (16) 

Match report

Two tries from winger Matty Russell helped Warrington claim their third victory of the season against Widnes thanks to a strong second half display at the Halliwell Jones stadium.

Warrington trailed 6-4 at half time against their local rivals but Russell's double and further tries from Kevin Brown and Peta Hiku and three goals from Stefan Ratchford saw the Wolves finish the regular season with a third straight win.

With both sides already consigned to the middle eights, the result had little consequence to the final standings. The next time these rivals meet the stakes will be much higher as they will be scrapping for their Super League lives.

But with the Wolves winning both Super League encounters and also being successful in a Challenge Cup tie they will go into that game with the Vikings with greater confidence.

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Joe Mellor's excellent efforts for the Vikings were rewarded with a 15th minute first half try which Stefan Marsh converted but that was their only score of the night

The Wolves were without Chris Hill, Kurt Gidley and Ben Pomeroy from the side that defeated Wigan seven days previous with Brown, Russell and George King returning to the side.

Widnes made eight changes from the side that lost heavily at home to Wakefield but they slumped to their fourth straight defeat.

It was a nightmare start for the visitors when prop Gil Dudson lost the ball in the very first tackle of the game and the Wolves took full advantage as Brown's pass gave Russell the space to scramble over in the corner for the opening try.

The Wolves were very much on top in the opening stages and Tom Lineham had a try ruled out for offside by the video referee as they looked to add to their early lead.

But on their first real period of attacking play deep in the Wolves half the Vikings came up with a superb solo try from Mellor who skipped his way through some weak Warrington defence from 20 metres out to score and Marsh converted to give the visitors a 6-4 advantage.

Mellor's try proved to be the last score of the first half as some excellent Widnes defence kept their line intact with Corey Thompson pulling off a try-saving tackle on Ryan Atkins and Marsh keeping cool to deal with a Hiku kick behind his own line under pressure from Russell.

The home side were given an injury scare on the half hour when Ben Currie went to ground clutching his knee in just his second game back after a 10-month absence, but the forward was given the all clear to carry on after lengthy treatment.

And Currie showed all was well when he came up with a try-saving tackle minutes before the break on winger Tom Armstrong to keep the score at 6-4 at half time.

However Currie failed to return for the second half as a precautionary measure by the Wolves with more important challenges ahead.

The start of the second half followed a similar pattern with plenty of effort but little in the way of quality from both sides until three tries in a 10 minutes spell from the home side sealed the game.

The Wolves regained the lead on 52 minutes when following a crossfield kick by Declan Patton it was Hiku who outjumped Charly Runciman to claim his first try for the club in his fourth game.

And six minutes later another clever reverse kick by Patton allowed Brown to touch down under the posts against his former club and with Ratchford landing both conversions the Wolves took a 16-6 lead.

Russell then claimed his second try of the night when he was on the end of a crisp handling movement to again finish well in the corner and Ratchford converted to seal the win.

Match reaction

Warrington coach Tony Smith on Ben Currie's injury fears: "Ben's knee is OK, he got a tweak but he's got some ice and strapping on it to keep it from swelling but the medics are not too concerned at the moment.

"It was a bit of a scare for him and we opted not to play him in the second half, it was not worth the risk, so will look after him and the early indications are we're pretty confident he will be OK for the Middle 8s."

On the victory: "It was a good workout and timely for us. We were disjointed in the first half which was understandable with another new half-back combination this week which took a bit of coming round to.

"I thought we were a bit rusty the way we were playing in the first half and we were rushing things and trying to throw passes when we didn't need to instead of taking control of the ball and maybe taking the tackle and putting on a better play.

"But we got hold of things in the second half and our defence also got better which enabled to do more with the ball and come up with some good combinations."

Widnes coach Denis Betts on the Middle 8s: "Overall I'm disappointed we didn't stay in the fight. You want to win these games and be successful moving forward but you want to respect the process that is going to keep us in Super League which we failed to do in the second half.

"We were patchy again. It was a great 40 minutes and we probably could have asked a few more questions with some of our kicks but we were solid which we haven't been over the last couple of weeks.

"We just failed to apply the pressure when we had the ball in the second half, we dropped the ball twice on their line and gave a penalty away and didn't really get back into the game.

"We now have a two-week break and then have seven games in a mini-season and it gives us the chance to right a couple of wrongs when we feel we have let ourselves down by losing close games."