Sport can do strange things to many people. It can divide us, it can unite us, and it can reduce us to tears – but perhaps most importantly of all, sport can bring communities and towns together like nothing else. How that has been evident over the past seven days in Widnes.
Dwarfed in size by Manchester and Liverpool – and in rugby league terms by the likes of St Helens and Wigan – round these parts sport is not so much a hobby as a way of life. So when the town’s elite sporting side, Widnes Vikings – champions of the world as recently as 1989 – were placed in administration last week amid a real threat of liquidation, a response from the community was to be expected.
Rugby league still prides itself on being at the heart of its communities 124 years on from its formation. On Friday, after supporters raised more than £100,000 during the week to keep the Vikings alive, a new consortium of local businessmen took charge of Widnes, securing its immediate future.
“It was 24 hours away from liquidation in all honesty,” said Chris Price, the head of the consortium. “But what we’ve seen is remarkable from the community. People have been turning up at all hours, offering food, money, anything; they just all wanted to do something. The staff haven’t been paid and they’ve faced uncertainty over their futures but they’ve kept coming in.”
London Broncos stunned the reigning champions, Wigan, in Ealing to ensure the Warriors’ disappointing start to the Super League season continued.
Wigan remain on zero points following the 18-16 defeat, having won just one of their opening four games, as well as receiving a two-point deduction from the Rugby Football League for a salary cap breach last year.
Kieran Dixon’s second-half try proved to be the difference for London, who are four points ahead of Wigan and also winless Huddersfield. The Giants are the only side in Super League yet to win a game this season, having fallen to a fourth consecutive defeat yesterday, against Hull FC.
The Black and Whites won 28-8 in West Yorkshire to secure back‑to‑back victories, with Joe Westerman scoring twice as they ensured Huddersfield remain bottom of the table following the opening month of the season. Aaron Bower
The Championship fixture against Sheffield last weekend was postponed because of the financial uncertainty engulfing the club, who were relegated from Super League last season. But once survival was achieved on Friday, it meant the game on Sunday could go ahead – and how the people of Widnes turned out in their thousands to usher in the start of a new era.
Despite the early lashings of Storm Freya battering the north‑west on Sunday afternoon, there were queues around the stadium for tickets for the Vikings’ return to action against Featherstone in the Championship. They were not disappointed, as Widnes won 44-22 in front of one of their biggest crowds in years, officially declared at almost 6,000, although it felt like much more.
“A lot of people were here today who have fallen away in recent seasons, and I think we’ve shown them there is something to get behind here,” Price said.
The bigger battles are perhaps still to come as the new consortium seeks to stabilise the club. As per the Rugby Football League’s rules, Widnes were deducted 12 points for entering administration, sending them to the bottom of the table. The administrators also made three of the club’s higher-earning players redundant; further departures may yet follow as the consortium seeks to balance the books with a monthly wage bill of around £100,000.
“I’m not stupid enough to think everything carries on as normal,” the Widnes coach, Kieron Purtill, said. “We have to cut our cloth accordingly now.”
However, in terms of the result here – which almost felt like a footnote given everything that has happened over the past week – this was about as encouraging a start as any Widnesian could have asked for.